Pragmatic directions about language use: Offers of words and relations

• Published in: Language in society Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 181 - 212
• Main Author: WONG, EVE V. CLARK & ANDREW D.-W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.04.2002
• Subjects: Adjectives; Adults; child-directed speech; Children; Conversation; Infants; Language; Language acquisition; Language use; Linguistics; Mothers; Nouns; Pragmatics; Pragmatism; Referents; Social relations; Speech; Studies; Syntactic structures; Verbs; word meanings; Words; Language acquisition; word meanings; child-directed speech
• ISSN: 0047-4045; 1469-8013
• DOI: 10.1017/S0047404501020152

Adult speakers constantly offer young children new terms, conventional words for the events and objects being talked about. They make direct offers of unfamiliar words, using deictics or other forms that signal that the upcoming term is new, and they make indirect offers on the assumption that the relevant meaning is computable on that occasion. Adults also present young children with information about how words are related to each other through such connections as is a part of, is a kind of, belongs to, or is used for. These pragmatic directions provide children with essential information about language and language use as they make inferences about possible meanings for unfamiliar words. They also offer support for an alternative to constraints-based accounts of lexical acquisition by providing a conversation-based approach more consistent with the findings from spontaneous speech and from experimental results.