Discourse Development: Progress in Cognitive Development Research PDF
Preview Discourse Development: Progress in Cognitive Development Research
Springer Series in Cognitive Development Series Editor Charles J. Brainerd Springer Series in Cognitive Development Series Editor: Charles J. Brainerd Children's Logical and Mathematical Cognition: Progress in Cognitive Development Research Charles J. Brainerd (Ed.) Verbal Processes in Children: Progress in Cognitive Development Research Charles J. Brainerd/Michael Pressley (Eds.) Adult Cognition: An Experimental Psychology of Human Aging Timothy A. Salthouse Recent Advances in Cognitive-Development Theory: Progress in Cognitive Development Research Charles J. Brainerd (Ed.) Learning in Children: Progress in Cognitive Development Research Jeffrey Bisanz/Gay L. Bisanz/Robert Kail (Eds.) Cognitive Strategy Research: Psychological Foundations Michael PressleylJoel R. Levin (Eds.) Cognitive Strategy Research: Educational Applications Michael PressleylJoel R. Levin (Eds.) Equilibrium in the Balance: A Study of Psychological Explanation Sophie Haroutunian Crib Speech and Language Play Stan A. Kuczaj, II Discourse Development Progress in Cognitive Development Research Stan A. Kuczaj, II (Ed.) Discourse Development Progress in Cognitive Development Research Edited by Stan A. Kuczaj, II Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg Tokyo Stan A. Kuczaj, II Department of Psychology Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas 75275 U.S.A. Series Editor Charles J. Brainerd Department of Psychology University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2E9 With 5 Figures Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Discourse development. (Springer series in cognitive development) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Language acquisition. 2. Children-Communication. I. Kuczaj, Stan A. II. Series. P118.D57 1984 401'.9 83-20360 © 1984 by Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1984 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form without written permission from Springer-Verlag, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Typeset by MS Associates, Champaign, Illinois. ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-9510-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-9508-9 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4613-9508-9 987 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Ann Wassel. For all you do, this book's for you. Series Preface For some time now, the study of cognitive development has been far and away the most active discipline within developmental psychology. Although there would be much disagreement as to the exact proportion of papers published in develop- mental journals that could be considered cognitive, 50% seems like a conservative estimate. Hence, a series of scholarly books devoted to work in cognitive devel- opment is especially appropriate at this time. The Springer Series in Cognitive Development contains two basic types of books, namely, edited collections of original chapters by several authors, and original volumes written by one author or a small group of authors. The flagship for the Springer Series is a serial publication of the "advances" type, carrying the subtitle Progress in Cognitive Development Research. Each volume in the Progress sequence is strongly thematic, in that it is limited to some well-defined domain of cognitive- developmental research (e.g., logical and mathematical development, development of learning). All Progress volumes will be edited collections. Editors of such collections, upon consultation with the Series Editor, may elect to have their books published either as contributions to the Progress sequence or as separate volumes. All books written by one author or a small group of authors are being published as separate volumes within the series. A fairly broad definition of cognitive development is being used in the selection of books for this series. The classic topics of concept development, children's thinking and reasoning, the development of learning, language development, and memory development will, of course, be included. So, however, will newer areas such as social-cognitive development, educational applications, formal modeling, and philosophical implications of cognitive-developmental theory. Although it is viii Series Preface anticipated that most books in the series will be empirical in orientation, theoretical and philosophical works are also welcome. With books of the latter sort, hetero- geneity of theoretical perspective is encouraged, and no attempt will be made to foster some specific theoretical perspective at the expense of others (e.g., Piagetian versus behavioral or behavioral versus information processing). C. J. Brainerd Preface The brief history of developmental psycholinguistics contains a number of zeit- geist shifts. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the field was dominated by an overriding concern with the nature of syntax and syntactic development, due largely to the seminal work of Noam Chomsky. During this period, relatively little attention was given to children's emerging communicative skills, the operative assumption being that if syntactic development could be explained, explanations of other language- related phenomenon would soon follow. For a variety of reasons (e.g., disenchant- ment with Chomsky's theory; the difficulty of studying syntactic development), a different operative assumption began to emerge in the early 1970s. This view held that if the development of communicative skills could be explained, then other aspects of language development would be more readily accounted for. Not only did this new assumption result in a marked increase in the amount of work being done on communicative development, it also resulted in attempts to explain phono- logical, semantic, and syntactic development in terms of children's intrinsic and extrinsic needs to be more efficient communicators. At present, it is unclear whether any single aspect of language development can provide an explanatory basis for the whole of language development. Just as the focus on syntactic development resulted in the neglect of areas such as commu- nicative development, the focus on communicative development as the relevant topic for investigation has resulted in the relative neglect of important phenomena such as syntactic development. Those of us who study language development must remember that it is a multidimensional field. Children who are perfecting their communicative skills are also learning to articulate sounds, attach meanings to words, and utilize a variety of morphological and grammatical constructions. We x Preface do children an injustice if we assume that any of these skills develop in isolation. Although the focus of this book is on the development of communicative skills in children, this focus is not intended to minimize the importance of other aspects of language development. The authors of the chapters do not argue that commu- nication is the essence of human language, but instead point out aspects of com- municative development of which scholars of language development should be aware. The topics range from a discussion of the implications of ethology for the consideration of communicative development to a consideration of communicative development in atypical language learners. Despite the range of topics, the chapters are tied together by a common concern, namely the importance of studying and eventually understanding communicative development. Recognizing that such a topic has many aspects, and that communicative development is intimately inter- twined with other aspects of language development, is necessary if we are ever to explain what seems to be an unfathomable phenomenon-young children's relatively easy mastery of their native tongue. We (the authors and editor) hope that the present volume makes the mystery slightly more fathomable. Dallas, Texas Stan A. Kuczaj, II February, 1984 Contents Chapter 1 Implications of Ethology for the Study of Pragmatic Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Judith A. Becker Ethology........................................................ 2 Ethological Methods and Pragmatics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Pragmatic Behaviors. . . . . . . . . . 4 The Functional Significance of Pragmatic Behaviors. . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Conclusions..................................................... 14 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Chapter 2 Answering Appropriately: A Developmental Perspective on Conversational Knowledge.................................... 19 Marilyn Shatz and Laura McCloskey The Nature of Early Contingent Responding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Toward an Understanding of Responses to Speech Acts by Both Children and Adults. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Further Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Summary .......................... ..... ..... ........ ....... .... 35 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
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