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It is argued that the theoretical framework used in earlier studies of children's use of the articles is inadequate, failing in some important ways to capture even normal adult usage. A new theory of article usage is proposed which is based on the concept of mental models. Previous psychological investigations are evaluated in the light of this theory and the major issues raised are investigated experimentally. Nine experiments involving approximately 310 three to seven-year old children and 65 parents are reported. The experiments were designed to investigate the effects of two main factors on children’s use of the articles, namely, the knowledge of the listener and the composition of the referential array. Different kinds of tasks were employed which required responses varying from article plus noun to single sentences and extended narratives. The results of the experiments showed that although young children can, and do, take into account the status of an object within a referential array, the over-riding factor in their choice of referring expression is their perception of the knowledge of the listener. When they judge that the listener's model does not contain the same number and kind of objects as their own (the listener is ignorant), children will use an indefinite description to introduce a referent regardless of the status of that referent in the array. However, when the listener is knowledgeable indefinite descriptions are reserved for one of several identical or similar objects and definite descriptions are used for objects which are known to be unique in the listener's model. Other factors which influence children’s use of the articles include the difficulty of the task, the child’s perception of the purpose of the task, and the range of descriptions in the child's linguistic repertoire.

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本論文藉由分析兩位三歲兒童和他們母親的對話來探討兒童行使請求(request)的情形。文中的討論主要涵蓋了三個層面。分別是兒童行使請求時採取的策略，使用的語言形式，以及運用的互動知識(interactional knowledge)。結果發現，兩位兒童行使請求時會採用下面的策略：指明一特定的動作、指明想要取得的物體、指出自已的需求及間接暗示。此外，他們利用以上的策略行使請求時所使用的語言形式有所不同；而這些差異似乎間接反映出這兩位兒童的一些對話或是人際互動的知識(conversational or interpersonal knowledge)影響了他們請求時所使用的語言形式。因此，本論文推論兒童在三歲左右或許已經知道了一些互動知識，而這些互動知識會影響他們在對話中如何請求。 / This study aims to explore children’s requests in mother-children conversation based on dyads of two three-year-old children and their mothers. Three aspects about children’s requests in daily conversation are concerned: (1) the means or strategies children depend on to convey their request intents; (2) the formal or linguistic elements children employ to realize their request intents; and (3) the conversational or interpersonal skills children may have acquired as they are requesting. With a careful examination over the collected conversations, it is found that children at the age of three tend to demonstrate their requests through the following means. First, children indicate a specific action they intend their hearers to do in their utterances. Second, children request for a desired object by indicating literally the target objects, or information about the target object, e.g. adjectives or quantifiers. Thirdly, they indicate their self-want to have their hearer fulfill their desire. The last means children employ to request is hinting. They indirectly convey their request intents, and their hearer can infer the intended act. In addition, children usually use different formal elements to manifest their requests. For example, their requests for a specific action were found to be conveyed with imperatives, imperatives with sentence-final particles, or imperatives with A-not-A tags. Further investigation on the formal varieties of children’s requests reveals that some conversational or interpersonal factors may play a role in how children convey their request intents, e.g. cooperativeness, social status, conversational topic. The findings, therefore, show that children at the age of three have probably been aware of some conversational or interpersonal knowledge and the knowledge may affect their performance of requests in conversation.

The goal of the following project is to probe into the early knowledge of the syntactic and the pragmatic components of language at the syntax-pragmatics interface, as exemplified by discourse-related elements such as object clitics. Object clitics, in addition to allowing for cross-linguistic generalizations, provide an insight into the early clause structure and the mechanisms which constrain the syntax-pragmatics interface. Cross linguistic variation has been found to be limited and well-governed, and has been attributed to the underlying syntactic mechanism, such as the Unique Checking Constrain or a number of pragmatic constraints operative in the child's grammar such as inability to mark referentiality. In addition, this study explores a theory which attempts to integrate the acquisition of syntax and pragmatics by attributing early non-finite structures in child grammar to a maturational discourse linking mechanism. The present project seeks to validate the claims of the above theories by offering new data and a novel perspective. The empirical part presents the results of one pilot study based on naturalistic language production by a monolingual Polish child age 2;1 - 2;9, and three data elicitation experiments conducted with 53 monolingual Polish children age 2;9 - 5;10. the clitic production experiment composed of two types of data. The pilot study establishes the relative age of clitic production. The data elicitation experiments focus on clitic production, clitic comprehension and knowledge of Principle B, as well as clitic referentiality resolution in pragmatically infelicitous contexts. It is shown that Polish children do not produce clitics from the beginning. It is concluded based on group and individual results that comprehension of objects clitic precedes production and that production is unlikely without comprehension. It is shown that age is a significant factor in clitic comprehension, production and referentiality resolution. It is demonstrated that Polish children exhibit early knowledge of Principle B. Also, it is suggested that children who produce object clitics are more likely to resolve clitic referentiality in pragmatically infelicitous contexts.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Mean length of utterance (MLU) is widely used in child language sample analysis as a way to quantify language development. The current study examines the split-half reliability of MLU and two alternative measures: MLU2 and median length of utterance (MdLU). The effects of utterance segmentation into phonological units (P-units) or communication units (C-units) on reliability were also studied. Sixty conversational child language samples were used which included ten children with language impairment. All measures were found to have high levels of split-half reliability, with MLU and MLU2 having higher levels of reliability than MdLU. There was no significant difference between MLU and MLU2. The differences in reliability when segmented into P-units or C-units were inconsistent. Overall, MLU and MLU2 are adequately reliable measures for clinical use.

This longitudinal study focuses on the language production of two siblings, aged 6 and 9 at the beginning of the data collection period, who have been brought up in a bilingual family in New York. The parents of the two girls are native speakers of German and Spanish, respectively, and English for them is the language of education and the larger community. The study specifically examines the phenomenon of code switching, or transitioning between languages, either within one sentence or within one speech situation. I examine the extent to which these switches are caused by deficiencies in vocabulary in a specific language, and seek to identify other possible causes for such transitions. The data collected mainly through recording and transcription of the children's speech within the family home allowed me to identify a number of sociopragmatic functions most commonly fulfilled by producing mixed utterances, such as referring to a specific person, including or excluding someone from the conversation, changing the interlocutor or the topic or explaining or insisting on a certain idea. Lexical need was also an important cause of code switching, although it did not prevail over the other categories. The distribution in the amount and function of code switches turned out to be in a dynamic state, with both quantitative and qualitative changes observed throughout the study period. The age difference between the children and the relationship between the younger and elder sibling were additional factors which influenced their language choice. I conclude that code switching, especially in the case of child speech, should be considered a fluid and multifaceted phenomenon which represents the speaker's role in the conversation and reflects multiple social and pragmatic functions; while elements of two (or more) languages are often combined for purely lexical reasons, this is only one aspect of trilingual code switching, which allows the speaker, consciously or not, to explore the three languages as ways of establishing his or her personality and looking at reality both within and outside the means of each particular language.

Thesis (M.H.S.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. "May 2008" Includes bibliographical references.