Children's Language

Conti-Ramsden, Gina; Snow, Catherine E.

"They have done a great service in presenting to an international audience a diverse array of approaches and data from an international group of authors."—Merrill-Palmer Quarterly"Becker's chapter on the acquisition of pragmatic competence provides an excellent and succinct introduction to the research in this field....there is a very welcome diversity in the type of problems investigated....Conti-Ramsden and Snow have done an excellent job....this book contains reports of cutting-edge research that will be of great interest to those interested in language use and development during the preschool years....Much is exploratory and opens new domains of inquiry that are likely to inspire further research by investigators who read these chapters."—Contemporary Psychology

• Contents: G. Conti-Ramsden, C.E. Snow, Children's Language: How It Develops and How It Is Used. J.A. Becker, Processes in the Acquisition of Pragmatic Competence. C. Liberg, "I Am Not Guessing!": Children's Achievement of Early Literacy. M. Przetacznik-Gierowska, M. Ligeza, Cognitive and Interpersonal Functions of Children's Questions. M. Mikes, Some Issues of Lexical Development in Early Bi- and Tri-Linguals. N. Budwig, A Functional Approach to the Acquisition of Personal Pronouns. E.M. Scarpa, Intonation and Dialogue Processes in Early Speech. M.B. Rice, Preschoolers' QUIL: Quick Incidental Learning of Words. Z. Reger, Mothers' Speech in Different Social Groups in Hungary. J.W. Astington, Metapragmatics: Children's Conception of Promising. M.S. Barbieri, F. Colavita, N. Scheuer, The Beginning of the Explaining Capacity. G.W. Shugar, G. Kmita, The Pragmatics of Collaboration: Participant Structure and the Structure of Participation. K. Reeder, Text or Context? The Influence of Early Literate Experience Upon Pre-school Children's Speech Act Comprehension.