Dissertations / Theses: 'Pragmatic language development'

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Varchavskaia, Paulina 1977. "Early pragmatic language development for an infant robot." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87181.

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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002. Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-116). by Paulina Varchavskaia. S.M.

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Rose, Marda C. "Pragmatic development of L2 Spanish proposals in planning talk." Thesis, Indiana University, 2013. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3599236.

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This study examines proposals made during planning talk—a speech act that has received little attention in previous literature—to determine the applicability of the stages of second language (L2) pragmatic development posited by Kasper and Rose (2002). Although Kasper and Rose suggest that formulas play a prominent role in L2 pragmatic development, few studies have considered the applicability of their stages to a non-formulaic speech act. The current study investigated proposal production in the planning talk of 69 participants: 46 learners of Spanish enrolled at five levels of instruction in a seven-week Spanish immersion program, 12 native Spanish speaking instructors in the same program, and 11 native English speaking undergraduate students at the same institution enrolled during the academic year. The L2 learners worked in groups of two or three as they planned three different role-plays during the seventh week of instruction. The native speakers met with the researcher in groups of two or three to complete the same role-plays in their first language (L1). A total of 1809 proposals and 351 supporting moves were produced in approximately four hours of planning talk. Analysis of transcriptions focused on the realization of the head-act strategies, deictic centering, internal and external modification, and the influence of the conversational context on the production of proposals. Results of this cross-sectional analysis suggest that learners do not pass through a formulaic stage when producing proposals in planning talk. The results also suggest that the learners' production of proposals exhibits a u-shaped curve as they adhere to L1 English norms at intermediate levels of proficiency before reflecting L1 Spanish norms at more advanced levels of instruction. L1 English influence was observed in the level of directness of the head-act strategies, the use of deictic centering, internal and external modification, and the influence of the conversational context. Results point to a new framework involving three universal stages of L2 pragmatic development in which L1 influence and pragmatic expansion are more salient.

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Collins, Anna. "Metapragmatic awareness in children with typical language development, pragmatic language impairment and specific language impairment." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2013. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/metapragmatic-awareness-in-children-with-typical-language-development-pragmatic-language-impairment-and-specific-language-impairment(67bb77e7-bda0-40d2-ac62-772bbab8bb25).html.

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Metapragmatic awareness (MPA) is the ability to explicitly reflect upon the pragmatic rules that govern conversation. There is a paucity of research on how MPA develops in childhood and whether it is impaired in children with pragmatic impairments. Despite this, MPA is often cited as an intervention tool for children with pragmatic language impairments (cwPLI) and children with specific language impairments (cwSLI). There are currently no published assessments of MPA ability and practice would benefit from application of a formalised assessment methodology. This thesis reports the phases of development of a novel clinical assessment of MPA for school-aged children called the Assessment of Metapragmatics (AMP). The AMP task is a set of 13 Video Items each depicting a conversation between pairs of school-aged children. Each Video Item portrays a different pragmatic rule violation. After viewing each AMP Video Item the participants were asked a set of Assessor Questions designed to measure MPA. The AMP Video Items were shown to 40 children with typical language development (cwTLD), 34 cwPLI and 14 cwSLI. Preliminary analyses revealed the AMP to be sensitive to age-related changes in MPA and to demonstrate good internal reliability. For the cwTLD there was a distinct developmental shift in MPA ability around seven years of age. At this age there was an increase in the child’s ability to use explicit metapragmatic vocabulary to describe a pragmatic rule violation. CwTLD demonstrated superior MPA ability in comparison to the cwPLI and the cwSLI. No differential impairment in MPA abilities was present between the cwPLI and cwSLI. Considerable variability in MPA abilities occurred for both the cwPLI and cwSLI and this was associated with language ability. This suggests that where MPA is found to be impaired, the child’s language ability should be taken into account and that language ability should be remediated before MPA is targeted in intervention. Where MPA is impaired, raising awareness of pragmatic rule may be the first step for intervention. Where MPA is age-appropriate, the child’s ability to monitor their use of the pragmatic rule, or their motivation to use the pragmatic rule, may be a more effective target of intervention in order to change behaviour. The relationship between MPA and social understanding for the pragmatic rule violation is also discussed and further studies of MPA are considered.

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Yu, Shengming. "The pragmatic development of hedging in EFL learners /." access full-text access abstract and table of contents, 2009. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/ezdb/thesis.pl?phd-en-b23749398f.pdf.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2009. "Submitted to Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-245)

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Igualada, Pérez Alfonso. "Gesture-speech temporal integration in language development." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/670094.

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In everyday interactions, speakers integrate gestures and speech sounds at a temporal level. One of the linguistic functions of temporally synchronous gesture-speech combinations is to provide prominence to specific parts of a discourse. While a bulk of evidence has explored the gesture-speech co-expressiveness at a semantic level, little is known about the children’s ability to use synchronized gestural and prosodic prominences in the benefit of language. This PhD thesis investigates gesture-speech temporal integration abilities in development and its beneficial impact for children’s language. The dissertation includes three independent studies at different time points in development, each one described in one chapter. The first two studies aim at investigating the role of perceiving gesture-speech temporal synchronizations functioning as markers of prominence, and its linkage to language abilities. First, a study investigated whether three- to- five- year- old children responded better to a word recall task when the word was presented with a contrast of prominence expressed with a synchronous beat gesture (i.e., a hand gesture synchronized with prominence in speech). The results indicated a beneficial local effect of the beat gesture on the recall of the temporally synchronous word. Second, a study examined whether six- to- eight- year-old children processed pragmatic inferences online more rapidly when the relevant information was presented together with a beat gesture. Additionally, this study investigated whether these potential benefits were due to the prominence expressed in the gesture or to its concomitant prosodic prominence. Results showed that children’s processing of a pragmatic inference was improved by both prosodic and beat gesture prominence contributions to the discourse. The last study focused on the predictive role of the first infant’s uses of temporally synchronous gesture-speech combinations on later language development. To do so, a longitudinal study correlated the infants’ production of synchronous pointing gesture-speech combinations during controlled socio-communicative interactions at 12 months with linguistic measures at 18 months. Results demonstrated that synchronous productions positively correlated with lexical and grammatical development at 18 months of age. Overall, the three studies show evidence that infant's synchronous gesture-speech abilities (a) function as multimodal markers of prominence; (b) when perceived in a discourse context synchronies have positive impact on children’s word recall (Study 1) and pragmatic inference resolution (Study 2); and (c) infants’ first productions of synchronous gesture-speech combinations serve a communicative strategy which is correlated to later language abilities (Study 3). The findings of the studies presented in this thesis point out the importance of synchronous gesture-speech combinations in highlighting information, as well as their beneficial effects in language acquisition.

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Rinaldi, Wendy Frances. "Understanding pragmatic meaning : a study of secondary school students with specific developmental language disorder." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1997. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10021777/.

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This study explores the hypothesis that there are particular difficulties for secondary school students with specific developmental language disorder (SDLD) in understanding contextual, pragmatic meaning in relation to non pragmatic (semantic) meaning. It compares sixty-four SDLD students, aged between twelve and fourteen years, with chronolgical-age-matched and language-age-matched non-language impaired students. Language age is measured by a test of non-pragmatic meaning comprehension. Incorporating the development of new procedures, the study examines the students' comprehension of two types of ambiguity where the context determines the speaker's intention: inconsistent messages of emotion and multiple meanings in context. These types of ambiguity are evident in a range of communicative intent, for example, to express sarcasm, idiomatic expression, deceipt and humour. Preliminary study into adolescent language suggests that, at this age, there is a particular expectation for students to be able to understand these kinds of communication, both in the classroom and socially. The study provides much evidence to support its central hypothesis: SDLD students made significantly fewer pragmatic responses than both comparison groups. The way students responded suggested two types of pragmatic analysis, one concerning plausibility judgment and a second concerning awareness of multiple reference and detection of miscomprehension. Nonlanguage- impaired children were significantly more able to use these types of analysis, for example, to rule out literal interpretations when they did not know the contextually implied meaning. Some evidence is provided to suggest that these analyses are underpinned by skills in both the metacommunicative and linguistic domains. The study's findings have several implcations for research and practice. The are serious implications, for example, for diagnostic assessment, in the light of the literature survey revealing that those currently available do not assess pragmatic meaning comprehension. The findings further provide a basis to challenge a view that disorders in the semantic and pragmatic domains necessarily co-occur, as reflected in the diagnostic category semanti-pragmatic disorder.

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Yumun, Elif. "The Development Of Pragmatic Competence: A Study On Requests." Master's thesis, METU, 2008. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12609955/index.pdf.

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ABSTRACT THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE: A STUDY ON REQUESTS Elif, Yumun M.A., Department of English Language Education Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Deniz Zeyrek September 2008, 224 pages The purpose of the study was to investigate the pragmatic competence of Turkish learners of English in requests at two levels of English proficiency. Another aspect of the study was to identify the overall and situational proficiency of the learners in performing the speech act of requests and to figure out development and transfer factors. Additionally, the extent to which the changing social variables of power and distance in each of the situations and through the situations affect the learners&rsquo request behaviour and the development regarding this issue was also pursued. For these purposes, the data were collected from four different subject groups. The learner groups include 19 beginner level and 19 upper intermediate level subjects. The control groups comprised of 21 Turkish native speakers and 15 American native speakers. The data were collected from the subject groups using interactive role plays. Each subject was provided with five request situations differing in terms of power and distance variables. The performances were videotaped and interactions were transcribed according to the CHAT manual (Mac Whinney 2000). Following the data collection process, the performances of the subjects in five situations were examined in terms of the directness levels, internal and external modification. For the statistical calculations in the study, one way ANOVA and t-test were employed. The results of the study showed that mostly there is development in the learner groups in accordance with the proficiency level. The upper intermediate group did better than the beginner group most of the time. However, there are also many instances in which even the upper intermediate group failed.

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Guerriero, A. M. Sonia (Antonia Michela Sonia). "The development of argument representation : a crosslinguistic discourse-pragmatic analysis of English and Japanese child language." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=100614.

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Children's learning of language-universal and language-specific principles of argument representation was the topic under investigation in the three studies comprising this thesis. Another objective was to investigate whether a discourse-pragmatic approach could be employed to explain children's patterns of argument omission and production, developmentally and crosslinguistically. To answer these questions, referential choice in the spontaneous language of monolingual English-speaking and monolingual Japanese-speaking children and their mothers was developmentally investigated whereby a sentence argument's morphological form (null, pronominal, lexical), referential status (given, new), and syntactic location (transitive subject, transitive object, intransitive subject) were systematically analysed. The first and second studies revealed that neither the English-speaking nor the Japanese-speaking children showed sensitivity to the referential distinction between given and new information early on in development (at 21 months of age). The English-speaking children mastered English-specific referential conventions between MLU 2.00 and 3.99 (between 24 and 32 months) and employed non-linguistic pragmatic correlates to supplement unconventional argument use from as early as MLU 1.00 (between 21 and 23 months). By contrast, the Japanese-speaking children showed unconventional referential choices as late as MLU 4.00 (between 33 and 36 months), as well as inconsistent use of non-linguistic pragmatic correlates. The third study revealed that, although language-specific differences were observed, neither group of children violated any of the four Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) constraints: The children avoided using more than one new or lexical argument per transitive clause and avoided casting new or lexical arguments as transitive subjects. However, evidence of sensitivity to PAS strategies from early on in development was inconclusive because the children omitted most sentence arguments at the beginning of speech production. Finally, all three studies revealed that children's referential choices that were inconsistent with expected discourse-pragmatic principles reflected similar patterns observed in parental input. Altogether, this set of studies led to the following general conclusions regarding the learning of argument representation and distribution in syntax: (1) a discourse-pragmatic approach can explain language-universal features of argument omission and production in child language and (2) language-specific strategies are learned via parental input.

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Geib, Ellen F. "The Role of Joint Attention in Pragmatic Language Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders." Thesis, Seattle Pacific University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10827170.

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All children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present with some form of impairment in social communication. Social cognitive learning theory suggests children’s early joint attention skills provide a foundation for future language development. Preliminary research suggests social cognitive behaviors such as joint attention in the context of parent scaffolding may serve as a mechanism for language development in children with ASD. The current study utilized a parent-child free play task to explore the relations among parent and child attention and responsivity and child pragmatic language in 26 children ages 3:1 to 6:11 and their parents. Parent supported joint attention was assessed during a parent child free-play task. Pragmatic language ability was assessed by the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL; Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999). Developmental status significantly predicted child’s pragmatic language score while controlling for overall verbal ability, F(2, 23) = 6.37, p = 0.01, ΔR2 = .15. Developmental status was not a significant predictor of parent supported joint attention, F(1, 24) = 1.09, p = 0.31, indicating that regardless of developmental status there was no significant difference in the percentage of time parents and children spent in parent supported joint attention. Children with autism spectrum disorders initiated joint attention with their parents (M = 0.28) about half as much as their typically developing peers (M = 0.55). Post hoc analyses indicated for children with ASD in this current study, initiation of joint attention was significantly correlated to child RJA, r = 0.60, p = 0.04, suggesting that child with ASD who initiate joint attention with their parents also spend a larger amount of time responding to their parent’s bids for joint attention. The interaction between developmental status and child RJA was also significant, F = 6.16, p =.02, ΔR 2 = .13, indicating that for children with ASD, responsiveness to their parent’s bids for joint attention of their parents plays a significant role for their pragmatic language ability in comparison to children with typically development. Collectively, the nature of these findings provides evidence for supporting social cognition in children with autism.

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Hübscher, Iris. "Preschoolers' pragmatic development: how prosody and gesture lend a helping hand." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/593503.

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While previous research on language development has highlighted the facilitating role of gesture (mainly deictic gesture) in children’s early access to meaning, little is known about the possible facilitating role of prosody and also of co-speech gestures in children’s pragmatic development in the preschool years. Previous work on developmental pragmatics has focused on the acquisition of morphosyntactic and lexical forms, and there is a need to adopt a more integrative multimodal perspective. The overarching aim of this thesis is to experimentally investigate, through a set of cross-sectional studies with preschool children (3- to 5-year-olds), whether prosodic and gestural cues serve as pragmatic precursors in the development of two key pragmatic phenomena, namely knowledge state (i.e., commitment to the status of information) and politeness (e.g., broadly speaking, adjusting one’s language). The first study uses a forced-choice paradigm to investigate preschool children’s understanding of another speaker’s knowledge state, presented in audio only, video only and audio-visual formats. Results show that overall children perform significantly better in detecting a speaker’s uncertainty when they have gestural cues present, and, importantly, the younger children were significantly better in detecting a speaker’s uncertainty when listening to a speaker’s intonation contour as compared to uncertainty expressed through a lexical epistemic adverb. The second study analyzes children’s (and adults’) multimodal expression of their knowledge state through an object guessing game by evaluating their production of prosodic, gestural and lexical cues and additionally assessing their self-assessment of their knowledge state. Results show that while preschool children are not yet able to self-report on their knowledge state, in the younger group, children encode their knowledge state through prosodic and gestural means only. And only in the older age group do children start to use a few lexical markers to signal their uncertainty. The third study uses a forced-choice paradigm to assess children’s understanding of a speaker’s politeness presented in audio only, video only and audio-visual formats. Results show that 3-year-old children detect a speaker’s polite stance significantly more through facial cues and intonation, highlighting children’s early ability to extract meaning from intonation when lexical cues are kept the same. Finally, the fourth study explores children’s multimodal production of politeness in semi-spontaneous requests in different sociopragmatic situations. Results show that regardless of the age group, children marked politeness through fine-grained gestural and prosodic means when producing requests to an adult with high social distance as compared to a classmate with low social distance, and this also depends on the cost of the request. Altogether the results of these studies demonstrate that children’s early pragmatic comprehension and expressive abilities rely strongly on prosodic and gestural marking, developing well before children master lexical and morphosyntactic markers. More specifically, the four studies presented in this thesis bring forth evidence that both prosody and co-speech gestures play a precursor role in children’s pragmatic development of knowledge state and politeness. Ultimately, the thesis highlights the importance of approaching the study of children’s pragmatic development from a multimodal perspective. Tot i que les investigacions prèvies sobre el desenvolupament del llenguatge han destacat el paper facilitador del gest (principalment, del gest díctic o d’assenyalament) en l'accés primerenc dels nens al significat del llenguatge, se sap poc sobre els beneficis de la prosòdia i dels gestos de la parla en el desenvolupament pragmàtic dels nens en els anys preescolars. La recerca que s’ha fet sobre el desenvolupament de la pragmàtica s'ha centrat en l'adquisició de formes morfosintàctiques i lèxiques, però és important adoptar una perspectiva multimodal més integradora. L'objectiu general d'aquesta tesi consisteix a investigar experimentalment, a través de quatre estudis transversals amb nens d’edat preescolar (de 3 a 5 anys d'edat), si els senyals prosòdics i gestuals actuen com a precursors pragmàtics en el desenvolupament de dos fenòmens pragmàtics, concretament el posicionament epistèmic (i.e., el grau de certesa del parlant sobre la informació expressada) i la cortesia. El primer estudi utilitza un paradigma d'elecció forçada per investigar la comprensió dels nens en edat preescolar sobre el posicionament epistèmic d'un altre parlant, presentat en tres condicions (només en àudio, només en vídeo i en format audiovisual). Els resultats mostren que els nens detecten millor la incertesa d'un parlant quan estan exposats a indicis gestuals. Crucialment, els nens de tres anys detecten millor la la incertesa d'un parlant quan la incertesa s'expressa a través de la prosòdia que quan s'expressa a través d’adverbis epistèmics. El segon estudi analitza l'expressió multimodal de l’estat epistèmic dels nens (i dels adults) a través d’un joc d’endevinar objectes. L'anàlisi dels senyals prosòdics, gestuals i lèxics mostren que, mentre els nens d’edat preescolar encara no poden valorar el seu posicionament epistèmic en canvi sí que codifiquen el seu grau de certesa a través de senyals prosòdics i gestuals. Només en el grup d'edat més gran els nens comencen a utilitzar alguns marcadors lèxics. El tercer estudi utilitza un paradigma d'elecció forçada per avaluar la comprensió dels nens sobre la cortesia d'un parlant, presentada també en tres condicions (només en àudio, només en vídeo i en format audiovisual). Els resultats mostren que els nens de 3 anys poden detectar una actitud educada a través de senyals facials i entonatius quan es mantenen constants les marques lèxiques. Els resultats mostren la capacitat inicial dels nens per extreure el significat de l'entonació, de forma paral·lela al que passa amb la gestualitat. Finalment, el quart estudi explora l'expressió multimodal de la cortesia en peticions emprades en diferents situacions sociopragmàtiques. Els resultats mostren que, independentment del grup d'edat, els nens marquen la cortesia a través de senyals gestuals i prosòdics detallats quan es fan peticions a un adult amb més distància social, en comparació amb un company amb qui presenten una distància social menor. L'ús d'aquestes marques també depèn del cost de la petició. En resum, els resultats dels quatre estudis de la tesi demostren que les habilitats primerenques de comprensió i d’expressió pragmàtica es basen en el marcatge prosòdic i gestual. i que aquestes es desenvolupen molt abans que els nens controlin els marcadors lèxics i morfosintàctics. Així, els quatre estudis presentats en aquesta tesi posen de manifest que tant la prosòdia com els gestos de la parla actuen com a precursors en el desenvolupament pragmàtic dels llenguatge. En definitiva, la tesi posa de relleu la importància d’aproximar-se a l'estudi del desenvolupament pragmàtic infantil des d'una perspectiva multimodal. A pesar de que las investigaciones previas sobre el desarrollo del lenguaje hayan destacado el papel facilitador del gesto (principalmente, del gesto deíctico o de señalamiento) en el acceso temprano de los niños al significado del lenguaje, poco se sabe aún sobre los beneficios de la prosodia y de los gestos del habla en el desarrollo pragmático de los niños en etapa preescolar. Hasta ahora, las investigaciones sobre el desarrollo de la pragmática se han centrado en la adquisición de formas morfosintácticas y léxicas, haciéndose necesario adoptar una perspectiva multimodal más integradora. El objetivo general de esta tesis consiste en investigar experimentalmente —a través de cuatro estudios transversales con niños de edad preescolar (de 3 a 5 años de edad)— si las señales prosódicas y gestuales actúan como precursores en el desarrollo de dos fenómenos pragmáticos, concretamente del posicionamiento epistémico (i.e., del grado de certeza del hablante sobre la información expresada) y de la cortesía. El primer estudio utiliza un paradigma de elección forzada para investigar cómo los niños en edad preescolar comprenden el posicionamiento epistémico de otro hablante, presentado los estímulos en tres condiciones (solo en audio, solo en vídeo y en formato audiovisual). Los resultados muestran que los niños detectan mejor la incertidumbre de un hablante cuando están expuestos a indicios gestuales. Crucialmente, los resultados también muestran que los niños de tres años detectan mejor la incertidumbre de un hablante cuando esta viene expresada a través de la prosodia que cuando lo hace a través de adverbios epistémicos. El segundo estudio analiza la expresión multimodal del estado epistémico de los niños (y de los adultos) a través de un juego de adivinar objetos. El análisis de las señales prosódicas, gestuales y léxicas muestra que, aunque los niños en edad preescolar todavía no pueden valorar su posicionamiento epistémico, los del grupo de menor edad ya son capaces de codificar su grado de certeza a través de señales prosódicas y gestuales, mientras que solo los niños del grupo de mayor edad empiezan a utilizar algunos marcadores léxicos. El tercer estudio utiliza también un paradigma de elección forzada para evaluar la comprensión de los niños sobre la cortesía de un hablante, presentado también los estímulos en tres condiciones (solo en audio, solo en vídeo y en formato audiovisual). Los resultados muestran que los niños de 3 años son capaces de detectar una actitud cortés significativamente mejor a través de señales faciales y entonativas, destacando además la capacidad temprana de los niños para extraer el significado de la entonación cuando las marcas léxicas se mantienen constantes. Finalmente, el cuarto estudio investiga la expresión multimodal de la cortesía en peticiones realizadas en diferentes situaciones socio-pragmáticas. Los resultados muestran, por un lado, que, independientemente del grupo de edad, los niños marcan la cortesía a través de señales gestuales y prosódicas diferenciadas en función de si las peticiones van dirigidas hacia un adulto con el que mantienen una mayor distancia social, o bien hacia un compañero con quien la distancia social es menor. Además, los resultados también muestran que el uso de estas marcas también depende del coste de la petición. En resumen, los resultados de los cuatro estudios de esta tesis demuestran que las habilidades tempranas de la comprensión y expresión de significados pragmáticos se basan en el marcaje prosódico y gestual, y que, además, estas habilidades se desarrollan mucho antes de que los niños dominen los marcadores léxicos y morfosintácticos. De este modo, los cuatro estudios presentados en esta tesis ponen de manifiesto que tanto la prosodia como los gestos del habla actúan como precursores en el desarrollo pragmático del lenguaje, subrayando así la necesidad de aproximarse al estudio del desarrollo pragmático infantil desde una perspectiva multimodal.

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Zhou, Jing, and 周兢. "Pragmatic development of mandarin-speaking children from 14 months to 32 months." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31242777.

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Tello, Rueda Leyla Yined. "Effects of pedagogical intervention on the development of pragmatic competence in adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL)." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280657.

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During the last several years, the growing interest in the teachability of pragmatics in a second or foreign language has been represented by a number of interventional studies that have examined either the possibility of teaching certain pragmatic features, or the effectiveness of specific teaching methods. This classroom-based project designed to investigate the teachability of pragmatics, focused on four intact classes at two different proficiency levels, using a quasi-experimental research design with the following structure: pretest - treatment - posttest - and delayed posttest. Participants were enrolled in a program of Foreign Languages at a university in Colombia. Two groups of students of basic English 2 (second semester) and two groups of students of intermediate English 1 (fifth semester) were the participants. The four groups received a written discourse completion test (WDCT) and a paired video-taped role-play (RP) as pretests. Results from the WDCT showed no significant differences between the two groups at each level, so the type of treatment (T1: pragmatics-based, and T2: institutionally imparted) was randomly assigned to the groups at each level. Treatment 1 provided learners with sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic information and practice of receptive and productive skills in the TL. The treatment lasted 20 hours distributed across three weeks, after which, all the participants received a post-test in the same two forms taken by the pretest. The comparison of paired samples between the pre-test and the post-test, and the comparison of multivariate means between groups at each level showed significant differences that confirmed the efficiency of the pragmatics-based instruction, although improvement was more evident in WDCT performance than in RP performance. The qualitative analysis indicated progress in the ability to perform the expected speech act, the use of typical expressions, and the amount of information given. Improvement was also salient in macrolevel cultural aspects such as the expression of appropriate levels of formality, directness and politeness for the realizations of requests, apologies and compliments, as measured by the WDCT and the RP. The delayed post-test suggests that the pragmatics-oriented instruction favored both retention and improvement for the WDCT, while for the RP, the main effect was retention.

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Modyanova, Nadezhda N. "Semantic and pragmatic language development in typical acquisition, autism spectrum disorders, and Williams syndrome with reference to developmental neurogenetics of the latter." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/57547.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2009. This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references. The elucidation of the biological bases of a complex trait like human language proceeds from identification of precise behavioral phenotypes to investigation of the underlying genes. The human behavioral parts of this dissertation focus on understanding the reasons for children's overuse of definite article 'the', to refer to one of several objects in a context set, as opposed to the unique established referent. Competing theories argue the deficit is either in children's semantic computational knowledge (of uniqueness/maximality), or in their pragmatic/social awareness/theory-of-mind development. Experiments in this dissertation focused on children's comprehension and interpretation of the indefinite and definite determiners, as well as 'that', anaphors 'another' and 'same', and free relative clauses. The results in this thesis suggest that in typically developing (TD) children the late acquisition of determiner 'the' is due to the late maturation of the semantic principle of maximality. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and with Williams syndrome (WS) either manifested an adult-like competence, an absence of manifestation of knowledge, or a pattern found in TD younger children (where 'that' is understood better than 'the' as referring to the salient unique referent) -- indicating delay of development of the language faculty, but no deviance. This suggests that the observed deficits in ASD and WS pattern with those in TD, and hence are also semantic in nature. The mouse neurogenetic part of this dissertation investigates whether the GTF2I family of genes, causal to WS behavioral phenotype, also contributes to WS cortical development. (cont.) By overexpression of Gtf2i and Gtf2ird1 in the mouse neocortex via in utero electroporation, their effects on laminar patterning and cell morphogenesis during brain development are characterized. The present results suggest that these genes can synergistically contribute to the abnormal neocortical development in WS, and thereby could contribute to language deficits in WS. Beyond posing an explanatory challenge to linguistic theories, the research comparing typical and atypical development sheds light on the mechanisms of language development and impairment, and provides endophenotypic descriptions of ASD and WS, which are crucial for elucidating not only genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders, but also the genetic basis of the human language faculty. by Nadezhda N. Modyanova. Ph.D.

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Ciftci, Hatime. "Pragmatic Competence in EFL Context: Suggestions in University Office Hour Discourse." Scholar Commons, 2015. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5927.

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Office hour interactions at universities are one type of communicative activity in which international instructors and their Turkish EFL students are involved as a form of academic or institutional discourse (Drew & Heritage, 1992). In such real world communication, both parties employ several linguistic strategies and attend to various interactional goals to address the academic concerns at hand (Chiang, 2011; Chiang & Mi, 2008; Limberg, 2007; 2010; Reindhart, 2010; Skyrme, 2010). Embracing a discourse analytic approach, this study investigated the primary functions and topics of office hour interactions; discourse organization of office hour interactions with regard to the features of participants’ contributions (e.g. turn-taking and turn length, verbosity or dominance, etc.); suggestion-response episodes; and successful and problematic aspects in office hour interactions. The study utilized the theoretical framework of relational work. Thirty-eight office hour interactions constituted the primary data source. The participants included 3 international instructors and their 34 Turkish EFL students. Post-interaction questionnaires and classroom observations served as secondary data sources in the study. The data analysis demonstrated that office hour interactions have various purposes and topics mostly related to the course content offered by the instructors, their expertise, and their experiences. Additionally, both parties co-constructed the discourse segments of equal and unequal contribution in which they achieved interactional and transactional goals using distinctive linguistic and discourse strategies. The co-constructed suggestion-response episodes included both instructor-initiated suggestions and students’ self-suggestory acts. The use of modals and semi-modals, imperatives, and interrogatives played a key role in instructor-initiated suggestions, whereas the students mostly relied on interrogatives. However, each party made their choices relying on the interactional goals they wished to accomplish through the use of suggestion forms. Finally, both the international instructors and their Turkish EFL students attended to different types of relational work that contributed to the successful and problematic aspects of office hour interactions, and that were mostly connected to suggestions.

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Cheng, Stephanie Weijung. "An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development of expressions of gratitude by Chinese learners of English." Diss., University of Iowa, 2005. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/104.

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The present study is an exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development of expressions of gratitude, specifically, gratitude after receiving a favor. Expressing gratitude is a speech act that is taught at an early age and is commonly performed by native speakers of most languages. It is, thus, often assumed that learners can successfully say thank you in the target language. However, studies show that even advanced learners have difficulty adequately expressing gratitude. The objectives of the present study are: (a) to investigate how native speakers of Chinese and native speakers of English express gratitude as defined by length of speech and use of strategies; (b) to examine whether there is evidence of pragmatic development in the speech act behavior of expressions of gratitude among Chinese learners of English with the increase of the length of residence in the United States; and (c) to examine whether there is evidence of pragmatic influence from L1 Chinese in English expressions of gratitude among Chinese learners of English. The data were collected through a discourse completion task questionnaire. Subjects' responses were classified into eight thanking strategies. Descriptive and t-test analyses were conducted to identify the pragmatic differences that distinguished the behavior of the three English learner groups, which varied according to their length of stay in the United States, from that of Chinese and English native speakers. The results show that Chinese and English native speakers have different preferences for thanking strategies in the eight situations. They are significantly different in the length of speech and use of strategies. In addition, there is a positive effect of the length of residence in the United States on English learners' pragmatic development. The results also show evidence of pragmatic influence from L1 Chinese. Moreover, contextual variables, social status, familiarity and imposition, have a significant influence on the length of speech and the use of strategies for all subject groups.

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Arvidsson, Caroline. "Development of audience design in adolescents' reference production." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för lingvistik, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-193908.

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Compared to adults, children are less effective at designing their utterances to suit the informational needs of their audience. This listener-catering behaviour, known as audience design, has been hypothesized to rely on domain general cognitive mechanisms, such as working memory and cognitive flexibility. Considering that adolescence is an important period of sociocognitive growth, research on the development of audience design beyond childhood is surprisingly scant. The aim of this study was to trace the development of audience design in early and middle adolescence, and test its reliance on cognitive control function. Participants (11–12 and 15–16 years) performed two tasks assessing (1) the ability to adjust referential expressions to inferred knowledge of hearers and (2) cognitive control function. The findings suggest that the ability to take into account the informational needs of listeners during utterance formation develops considerably between early and middle adolescence. Although performance on both tasks was higher in the middle adolescent group, the study provides no evidence for a reliance of the measured audience design behaviour on cognitive control function. Future research should aim to determine whether the development of audience design in adolescence is facilitated by an increased efficacy of knowledge state attribution processes. Förmågan att anpassa sina yttranden efter samtalspartnerns behov är mindre utvecklad hos barn än hos vuxna. Beteendet att ackommodera lyssnaren vid yttrandeformulering benämns ofta som mottargaranpassning. Mottagaranpassning i konversation har föreslagits vara avhängig exekutiva funktioner, såsom arbetsminne och kognitiv flexibilitet. Med tanke på att ungdomsåren är en viktig period för social och kognitiv mognad har anmärkningsvärt lite forskning genomförts på utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning under ungdomsåren. Målet med studien var att undersöka utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning i ungdomsåren och testa dess eventuella avhängighet av exekutiva funktioner. Deltagare (11–12 och 15–16 år) genomförde två tester som mätte (1) förmågan att anpassa referentiella yttranden till lyssnares förmodade omvärldskunskap och (2) exekutiva funktioner. Resultaten indikerar att förmågan att anpassa sina yttranden efter lyssnares förmodade omvärldskunskap utvecklas betydligt under ungdomsåren. Trots att den äldre åldersgruppen presterade bättre på testet som mätte exekutiva funktioner, predicerade inte exekutiva funktioner förmågan att mottagaranpassa referentiella yttranden. Framtida studier bör undersöka huruvida förmågan att tillskriva kunskapstillstånd till andra effektiviseras under ungdomsåren, och således främjar utvecklingen av mottagaranpassning.

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Martínez, Flor Alicia. "The effect of instruction on the development of pragmatic competence in the English as a foreign language context: A study based on suggestions." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Jaume I, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/10438.

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This dissertation investigates the effects of instruction on the acquisition of pragmatic competence in the classroom setting, and specifically in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. In particular, we examine the effects of instruction on learners' pragmatic development of a specific speech act, that of suggestions, with the goal of expanding the range of learning targets addressed in pragmatic interventional studies (Kasper and Rose, 2002). Apart from dealing with instructional effects, we also take into account the need to investigate various types of instruction in order to ascertain their effectiveness (Kasper and Rose, 2002). In this way, we analyse two different treatments (i.e. explicit and implicit) that have been operationalised on the basis of the principles underlying the paradigms of Focus on FormS and Focus on Form (Long, 1991, 1996, 1998; Doughty and Williams, 1998; Long and Robinson, 1998; Doughty, 2001). The aim of comparing both teaching approaches is to determine whether the two treatments are equally effective in developing learners' pragmatic competence regarding their production, awareness and confidence when judging the appropriateness of suggestions in different situations. Additionally, we are also concerned with issues related to research methodology and, bearing in mind findings from studies that observed task effects between oral and written production tasks (Houck and Gass, 1996; Sasaki, 1998; Safont, 2001), we have compared our learners' performance when making suggestions in two different tasks: an oral production task (i.e. phone messages) and a written production task (i.e. email). The results of the investigation indicate that, in comparison to the control group, both the explicit and implicit groups improved their pragmatic competence regarding their production, awareness and confidence when judging the appropriateness of suggestions in different situations. Moreover, comparing the explicit and implicit groups' performance in the post-test no statistical differences were observed between the two instructional treatments, which illustrates the effects of both explicit and implicit instruction to develop learners' pragmatic competence in the EFL classroom. The findings also show that the production task in which learners are engaged influences their use of suggestions, since there were task effects between the two production tasks employed in our study (i.e. phone messages and emails). In conclusion, the results obtained in this dissertation expand the scope of enquiry in the field of interlanguage pragmatics as well as outline practical pedagogical implications and open several lines of investigation to be examined in future research.

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Loukusa, S. (Soile). "The use of context in pragmatic language comprehension in normally developing children and children with Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism:an application of relevance theory." Doctoral thesis, University of Oulu, 2007. http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:9789514285783.

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Abstract This research explored, within the framework of relevance theory, how normally developing 3- to 9-year-old children and two age groups (age 7–9 and age 10–12) of children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism (AS/HFA) and their 7- to 9-year-old control group used context when answering questions and giving explanations for their correct answers. The children were asked questions targeting the pragmatic processes of reference assignments, enrichments, routines, implicatures and feelings. They were also asked to explain their correct answers to routine, implicature and feeling questions to elicit understanding about their awareness of how they had derived the answers from the context. In normally developing children the largest increase in correct answers occurred between the ages of 3 and 4 in all question types except feeling questions, where rapid development continued until age 5. After that development progressed more gradually until the age of 8 when the children performed near the ceiling level in all of these question types. Giving explanations for correct answers developed gradually between the ages of 3 and 9, indicating that becoming aware of the information used in inferencing has a longer developmental timeframe. Children's incorrect answers and explanations showed that, as children develop, their answering strategies become more sophisticated as they increasingly utilise context in different ways. Children with AS/HFA were able to answer all the question types. However, compared to the control group, the younger AS/HFA group did less well when answering contextually demanding questions, and the performance of the older AS/HFA group fell in between the younger AS/HFA group and the control group. Both AS/HFA groups had difficulties when giving explanations for their correct answers, showing difficulty in articulating explicitly how they had used context in arriving at the correct answer. Incorrect answers and explanations indicated that, usually, all the children tried to utilise contextual information, although the attempt failed somehow. For children with AS/HFA it was more typical to continue with their answer after first giving a correct answer or explanation, which then led to an irrelevant answer, suggesting that these children had difficulties with stopping processing at the relevant point Tiivistelmä Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin, kuinka normaalisti kehittyneet 3–9-vuotiaat lapset ja kaksi ikäryhmää lapsia (7–9-vuotiaat ja 10–12-vuotiaat), joilla on Aspergerin oireyhtymä tai hyvätasoinen autismi (AS/HFA) ja heidän 7–9-vuotiaista koostuva kontrolliryhmänsä, käyttivät kontekstia vastatessaan kysymyksiin ja perustellessaan oikeita vastauksiaan. Tutkimus tehtiin relevanssiteorian viitekehyksessä. Lapsilta kysyttiin pragmaattista prosessointia vaativia kysymyksiä, jotka arvioivat viittausten, epätäydellisten lauseiden, rutiinien, implikatuurien ja tunnetilojen ymmärtämistä. Lisäksi heidän tuli perustella oikeat vastaukset rutiini-, implikatuuri- ja tunnekysymyksiin, jotta nähtiin, olivatko lapset tietoisia, kuinka he olivat johtaneet vastauksensa kontekstista. Normaalisti kehittyneillä lapsilla oikeiden vastausten määrä lisääntyi nopeasti 3. ja 4. ikävuoden välillä kaikissa kysymystyypeissä. Tunnekysymyksiin vastaamisessa tämä nopean kehityksen kausi jatkui 5. ikävuoteen saakka. Tämän jälkeen kehitys jatkui hitaampana 8 vuoden ikään saakka, jolloin lapset suoriutuivat lähes kaikista kysymyksistä kaikissa eri kysymystyypeissä. Perustelujen antaminen oikeisiin vastauksiin kehittyi asteittain 3. ja 9. ikävuoden välillä, mikä kertoi, että vastauksessa käytetyn informaation tiedostamisen kehittyminen tapahtui pitemmällä aikavälillä. Lasten virheelliset vastaukset ja perustelut osoittivat, että iän lisääntyessä lasten vastausstrategiat muuttuivat kehittyneemmiksi ja he hyödynsivät kontekstia monin eri tavoin. Lapset, joilla oli AS/HFA, osasivat vastata kaikkiin esitettyihin kysymystyyppeihin. Kuitenkin nuorempi AS/HFA-ryhmä suoriutui kontrolliryhmää heikommin ja vanhemman AS/HFA-ryhmän suoriutuminen sijoittui nuoremman ikäryhmän ja kontrolliryhmän suoriutumisen puoliväliin. Molemmilla AS/HFA-ryhmillä esiintyi vaikeuksia oikeiden vastausten perustelussa, mikä kertoi vaikeudesta ilmaista, kuinka he olivat käyttäneet kontekstia oikeaan vastaukseen pääsemiseksi. Virheelliset vastaukset ja perustelut osoittivat, että yleensä kaikki lapset pyrkivät kontekstin hyödyntämiseen vaikka epäonnistuivatkin siinä. Lapsille, joilla oli AS/HFA, oli tyypillisempää jatkaa vastaamista vielä oikean vastauksen tai perustelun antamisen jälkeen, mikä lopulta johti aiheesta syrjähtämiseen. Tämä kertoi vaikeudesta lopettaa prosessointi relevantissa kohdassa

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Al-Amide, Mustafa. "Digital Games and the Development of Communicative Competence." Thesis, Malmö högskola, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-30840.

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The purpose of this paper was to review research within the field of digital games and language learning to explore whether gaming can facilitate communicative competence and foster motivation for language learning. To answer my questions I conducted a research synthesis, compiling a variety of research over the last decade to answer my questions as effectively as possible. Results showed that digital games do in fact facilitate language development and induce motivation. Research also showed that different games provide different opportunities and activities, resulting in some games fostering language competence more than others. For instance, World of Warcraft provided social situations where conversations were erratic, spontaneous, contextual and driven by small events in the game, while The Sims focused more on strategic and creative activities. Additionally, research suggested that digital games motivated learners to develop their L2 language in hope of achieving more goals together within a variety games and game types.

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Deret, Lydia. "Les savoir-agir langagiers professionnels des enseignants débutants." Thesis, Normandie, 2019. http://www.theses.fr/2019NORMC027/document.

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Ce travail s’inscrit dans la lignée des recherches portant sur la professionnalité des enseignants. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à l’activité langagière des débutants. L’hypothèse centrale est qu’il est possible d’identifier, au sein du discours des enseignants en interaction avec leurs élèves, des indices de leur développement professionnel. Le cadre théorique croise les apports de la didactique professionnelle avec ceux de la pragmatique du langage et de la théorie interactionniste linguistique. Replacé dans un contexte didactique, nous envisageons le langage comme premier instrument stratégique pour enseigner et nous nous situons dans une approche instrumentée de l’activité enseignante. Nous avons mené une enquête ergonomique auprès de trois néo-titulaires, à partir de vidéos réalisées au cours de séances de mathématiques et d’entretiens d’auto-confrontation. Les interactions langagières entre les enseignantes et leurs élèves ont été analysées quantitativement et qualitativement, en relation avec l’identification de fonctions pédago-didactiques. Les résultats caractérisent des savoir-agir-langagiers-professionnels, révélateurs de la professionnalité et du développement professionnel de chacune des enseignantes enquêtées This work takes place within a line of research regarding teachers’ professionalism. We are looking particularly at the language activity of beginners. The central hypothesis is that it is possible to identify, within teachers’ conversations as they interact with pupils, clues regarding their professional development. The theoretical framework links the contributions made by professional didactics with those of language pragmatic and interactional linguistic theory. Set within a didactical context, we consider language as the first strategical tool to teach and we are placed within an approach orchestrated by teacher activity. We lead an ergonomic investigation alongside three newly qualified teachers, from videos shot during mathematics lessons and from self- confrontation interviews. Language interactions between teachers and their students have been analysed qualitatively and quantitatively, in relation with the identification of pedago-didactic functions. Results highlight professional language know-hows, revealing of the professionalism and the professional development of each of the teachers investigated

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Blum, Sheri Stein. "An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Caregivers' Support for Their Preschool Children's Language and Social Skills Development." ScholarWorks, 2015. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1376.

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Some children have difficulty communicating due to a lack of age-appropriate language and social skills. Researchers have explored how music and language share features that shape language processing. The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological analysis was to explore the experiences of caregivers of preschool children who participated in a music-based program and to understand their perspectives related to children's language and social skill development. Learning style and sensory integration processing theories were used as framework to provide foundations of skills in this study. Research questions addressed caregivers' choices related to this program for their children, their experiences of their children's participation in the program, and how the caregivers perceive their children's language and social skills change as they participated in the program. Data from 8 participants were collected using narrative journals and interviews and were analyzed by identifying relationships and themes. Identified themes included the importance of choice of quality music program, improved language skills, improved social skills, and improvement in other areas. Caregivers reported that their children's language and social skills developed in the early weeks of participation in The Listening Program. Primary recommendations included providing opportunities to educate other parents and professionals about the benefits of music-based programs. Contributions to positive social change include the value of music-based programs as a complementary technique to aid language and social skill development in preschool aged children, and that children who participate become more effective communicators and interact more appropriately with others.

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Pagmar, David. "Frequency, Form, and Distribution of Illocutionary Speech Acts in Swedish Parent-Child Interaction." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för lingvistik, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-131459.

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In this study, young children’s development of speech acts was examined. Interaction between six Swedish-speaking parents and their children was observed. The frequency, form and distribution of speech acts in the output from the parents were compared with the frequency, form and distribution of the children’s speech acts. The frequency was measured by occurrences per analysed session. The aim of the analysis was to examine if the parent’s behaviour could be treated as a baseline for the child’s development. Both the parents’ and the children’s illocutionary speech acts were classified. Each parent-child dyad was observed at four different occasions, when the children were 1;0, 1;6, 2;0, and 2;6 years of age. Similar studies have previously shown that parents keep a consistent frequency of speech acts within a given time span of interaction, though the distribution of different types of speech acts may shift, depending on contextual factors. The form, in terms of Mean Length of Speech Act in Words (MLSAw), were correlated with the longitudinal result of the children’s MLSAw. The distribution of the parents’ speech acts showed extensive individual differences. The result showed that the children’s MLSAw move significantly closer the MLSAw of their parents. Since the parent’s MLSAw showed a wide distribution, these results indicate that the parent’s speech acts can be treated as a baseline for certain aspects of the children’s development, though further studies are needed.

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Zeberlein, Jennifer Catherine. "Examination of the Accuracy of the Social Language Development Test for Identification of Social Language Impairments." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1398975745.

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Flores-Salgado, Elizabeth. "A pragmatic study of developmental patterns in Mexican students making English requests and apologies." Doctoral thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/28866.

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"September 2008". Thesis (DAppLing)--Macquarie University, Division of Linguistics and Psychology, Dept. of Linguistics, 2009. Bibliography: p. 189-196. The purpose of this research was to analyse the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development of language groups at different proficiency levels and investigate the relationship between interlanguage pragmatics and grammatical competence. For this study, 36 native Spanish speaking EFL learners at different proficiency levels were asked to respond in English to 24 different situations which called for the speech acts of request and apology. Their English performances were compared to those of 12 American English native speakers in order to provide base-line cultural data. Thirty six Mexican Spanish native speakers also participated as a control group in order to analyse the role of the mother tongue in the performances of the EFL learners. The data, collected using a carton oral production task (COPT), were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results showed three important findings that illuminate the relationship between pragmatic development and grammatical competence and lent support to Kasper and Rose's (2003) claim of a universal pragmatic principle. The first finding suggested that basic adult learners possess a previous pragmatic knowledge in their L1 that allows them to focus on the intended meaning and, in most cases, and to assemble (from the linguistic structures available to them) an utterance that conveys a pragmatic intention and satisfies the communicative demands of a social situation. The second finding revealed that there are two essential conditions to communicate a linguistic action: the knowledge of the relevant linguistic rules and the knowledge of how to use them appropriately and effectively in a specific context. Without an elementary knowledge of the linguistic rules, it is impossible to select the forms to realize a speech act in a target-like manner. The findings further suggested that advanced learners possess the grammatical knowledge to produce an illocutionary act, but they need to learn the specific L2 pragmatic conventions that enable them to know when to use these grammatical forms and under what circumstances. Mode of access: World Wide Web. xi, 238 p. ill

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Wilson, Elspeth Amabel. "Children's development of Quantity, Relevance and Manner implicature understanding and the role of the speaker's epistemic state." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/270302.

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In learning language, children have to acquire not only words and constructions, but also the ability to make inferences about a speaker’s intended meaning. For instance, if in answer to the question, ‘what did you put in the bag?’, the speaker says, ‘I put in a book’, then the hearer infers that the speaker put in only a book, by assuming that the speaker is informative. On a Gricean approach to pragmatics, this implicated meaning – a quantity implicature – involves reasoning about the speaker’s epistemic state. This thesis examines children’s development of implicature understanding. It seeks to address the question of what the relationship is in development between quantity, relevance and manner implicatures; whether word learning by exclusion is a pragmatic forerunner to implicature, or based on a lexical heuristic; and whether reasoning about the speaker’s epistemic state is part of children’s pragmatic competence. This thesis contributes to research in experimental and developmental pragmatics by broadening the focus of investigation to include different types of implicatures, the relationship between them, and the contribution of other aspects of children’s development, including structural language knowledge. It makes the novel comparison of word learning by exclusion with a clearly pragmatic skill – implicatures – and opens an investigation of manner implicatures in development. It also presents new findings suggesting that children’s early competence with quantity implicatures in simple communicative situations belies their ongoing development in more complex ones, particularly where the speaker’s epistemic state is at stake. I present a series of experiments based on a sentence-to-picture-matching task, with children aged 3 to 7 years. In the first study, I identify a developmental trajectory whereby word learning by exclusion inferences emerge first, followed by ad hoc quantity and relevance, and finally scalar quantity inferences, which reflects their increasing complexity in a Gricean model. Then, I explore cognitive and environmental factors that might be associated with children’s pragmatic skills, and show that structural language knowledge – and, associated with it, socioeconomic status – is a main predictor of their implicature understanding. In the second study, I lay out some predictions for the development of manner implicatures, find similar patterns of understanding in children and adults, and highlight the particular challenges of studying manner implicatures experimentally. Finally, I focus on children’s ability to take into account the speaker’s epistemic state in pragmatic inferencing. While adults do not derive a quantity implicature appropriately when the speaker is ignorant, children tend to persist in deriving implicatures regardless of speaker ignorance, suggesting a continuing challenge of integrating contextual with linguistic information in utterance interpretation.

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Manis, Hannah C. "Relationship Between Joint Attention and Language in Multiparous and Uniparous Households." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2019. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/497.

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The present study was designed to examine differences in the effect of the number of children in the household (also known as “parity”) on the relationship between initiating joint attention (IJA) and language development. We reasoned that infants who are only children (i.e., in uniparous homes), relative to infants who have one or more siblings (i.e., in multiparous homes), would have more opportunity to engage in IJA, and would, therefore, acquire a larger number of object labels. We tested the hypotheses that: 1) there would be a positive correlation between the number of IJA bids and language overall, and 2) parity would moderate the IJA-language relationship such that in uniparous households, the aforementioned correlation would be stronger than in multiparous homes. Joint attention was measured using the Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS) Picture Book Task, and language was assessed through parental report on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MBCDI). There was no significant correlation between IJA and language on the whole, though there was a significant correlation for infants in uniparous homes between IJA and language. This finding partially supports Hypothesis 2 in terms of the IJA-language relationship being stronger in uniparous homes rather than multiparous ones, though it was only true for productive vocabulary. These null findings may provide reassurance for families with multiple children that their younger children are not at an IJA/language acquisition disadvantage.

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Hart, Erin Elizabeth. "A Comparative Analysis of the Patterns of Language Development between Children with Williams syndrome and Children with Down syndrome." Thesis, Boston College, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1972.

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Thesis advisor: Penny Hauser-Cram Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder marked by a microdeletion of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7. Down syndrome (DS) is a genetic disorder marked by a chromosomal abnormality in which an additional copy of chromosome 21 is present in some or all cells. A comparative analysis of language acquisition between populations of children with WS and populations of children with DS yielded largely different patterns in language development. Phonology was found to be largely intact in children with WS, while children with DS struggled to produce intelligible and articulate speech. Semantics proved an area of relative strength in comparison to other areas of language development in both populations. Syntax was found to be a relative strength in the WS population, while children with DS struggled with syntactic output. Both groups exhibited difficulties in syntactic processing. In contrast to common conceptions regarding pragmatic strengths in children with WS, results indicated that gesture, narrative and discourse were areas of relative weakness in this population. Gesture, narrative and discourse proved areas of relative strength for children with DS Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011 Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences Discipline: College Honors Program

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Matsumura, Shoichi. "A study of the second-language socialization of university-level students : a developmental pragmatics perspective." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0016/NQ56585.pdf.

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Mäkinen, L. (Leena). "Narrative language in typically developing children, children with specific language impairment and children with autism spectrum disorder." Doctoral thesis, Oulun yliopisto, 2015. http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:9789526206981.

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Abstract This study examined Finnish children’s narrative skills using a picture-based story generation task. 4- to 8-year-old children with typical development (n = 172), 5- to 7-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) (n = 19) and 5- to 10-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (n = 16) participated in the study. Linguistic (productivity, syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy) and pragmatic (referential accuracy, event content, mental state expressions, discourse features, and story comprehension) measures were used so as to gain a comprehensive picture of narrative skills. The choice of measures was based on the narrative abilities of the participants, and not all measures were used with all participants. In typically developing children, a subtle development trend was seen in all the measures used, but significant differences between consecutive age-groups were mostly seen in younger participants. The relationship between narrative productivity measures and event content was found to be important. The number of different word tokens was, in particular, useful in explaining the event content. For children with SLI, the linguistic and pragmatic aspects of narration were demanding. Their stories were short and contained less information than those of their control. Their referential and grammatical accuracy was also poorer than among typically developing children, and they showed difficulties in expressing the mental states of the story characters and in story comprehension. Children with ASD produced narratives with an almost similar linguistic structure to those of their control children. However, children with ASD showed difficulties in the pragmatic aspect of narration, in establishing informative story content and in story comprehension. They also tended to include irrelevant information in their stories, which was not seen to that extent in cases of typical development. This dissertation shows a development in 4- to 8-year-olds’ narratives that seems to occur around the ages of 4 and 5. Narrative difficulties seem to be related to both SLI and ASD, but are more wide-ranging in SLI, whereas in ASD difficulties focus on the pragmatic aspects of narration Tiivistelmä Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin, millaiset ovat suomalaislasten kuvasarjakerronnan avulla arvioidut kerrontataidot. Tutkimukseen osallistui 4–8-vuotiaita tyypillisesti kehittyneitä lapsia (n = 172), 5–7-vuotiaita lapsia, joilla on kielellinen erityisvaikeus (SLI) (n = 19) ja 5–10-vuotiaita lapsia, joilla on autismikirjon häiriö (ASD) (n = 16). Tutkimuksessa käytettiin lingvistisiä (produktiivisuus, syntaksin monipuolisuus, kieliopillinen tarkkuus) ja pragmaattisia (viittaussuhteiden tarkkuus, tapahtumasisältö, mielentilailmaukset, diskurssipiirteet, kertomuksen ymmärtäminen) muuttujia, jotta kerrontataidoista saadaan kokonaisvaltainen kuva. Kaikkia muuttujia ei käytetty kaikkien tutkittavien kesken, vaan tutkimusmenetelmien valinta perustui tutkittavien kerronnan piirteisiin. Tyypillisesti kehittyvien lasten kerrontataidot kehittyivät kaikkien käytettyjen muuttujien osalta, mutta peräkkäisissä ikäryhmissä merkitsevä muutos havaittiin vain nuorempien ikäryhmien välillä. Kerronnan produktiivisuuden ja tapahtumasisällön välillä havaittiin yhteys, ja erityisesti eri saneiden määrä oli merkitsevä tapahtumasisällön selittäjä. Kerronnan lingvistinen ja pragmaattinen hallinta oli haastavaa lapsille, joilla on SLI. Heidän kertomuksensa olivat pituudeltaan, tapahtumasisällöltään ja mielentilailmauksiltaan niukempia sekä viittaussuhteiltaan epätarkempia kuin tyypillisesti kehittyvien lasten kertomukset. Lapset, joilla on SLI, tuottivat enemmän kieliopillisia virheitä kuin kontrollilapset, ja myös tarinan ymmärtäminen oli heille haastavaa. Kertomuksen lingvistinen rakenne oli likimain samankaltainen tyypillisesti kehittyneillä lapsilla ja lapsilla, joilla on ASD. Lapset, joilla on ASD, tuottivat tapahtumasisällöltään niukempia kertomuksia kuin kontrollilapset, ja lisäksi heidän tarinansa sisälsivät irrelevanttia tietoa. Kertomuksen ymmärtäminen oli myös vaikeaa lapsille, joilla on ASD. Tutkimus osoittaa, että 4–8-vuotiaiden kerrontataidoissa on kehitystä, mikä vaikuttaa olevan aktiivista erityisesti 4–5 ikävuoden aikana. Kerronnan vaikeudet ovat kielellisessä erityisvaikeudessa laaja-alaisia, kun taas autismikirjossa vaikeudet näkyvät ennemmin kerronnan pragmaattisessa hallinnassa

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Mazzocconi, Chiara. "Laughter in interaction : semantics, pragmatics, and child development." Thesis, Université de Paris (2019-....), 2019. https://theses.md.univ-paris-diderot.fr/MAZZOCCONI_Chiara_va2.pdf.

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Le rire est une vocalisation universelle à travers les cultures et les langues. Il est omniprésent dans nos dialogues et utilisé pour un large éventail de fonctions. Le rire a été étudié sous plusieurs angles, mais les classifications proposées sont difficiles à intégrer dans un même système. Malgré le fait qu’il soit crucial dans nos interactions quotidiennes, le rire en conversation a reçu peu d’attention et les études sur la pragmatique du rire en interaction, ses corrélats neuronaux perceptuels et son développement chez l’enfant sont rares. Dans cette thèse, est proposé un nouveau cadre pour l'analyse du rire, fondé sur l'hypothèse cruciale que le rire a un contenu propositionnel, plaidant pour la nécessité de distinguer différentes couches d'analyse, tout comme dans l'étude de la parole: forme, positionnement, sémantique et pragmatique. Une représentation formelle de la signification du rire est proposée et une étude de corpus multilingue (français, chinois et anglais) est menée afin d’approfondir notre compréhension de l’utilisation du rire dans les conversations entre adultes. Des études préliminaires sont menées sur la viabilité d'un mappage forme-fonction du rire basée sur ses caractéristiques acoustiques, ainsi que sur les corrélats neuronaux impliqués dans la perception du rire qui servent différentes fonctions dans un dialogue naturel. Nos résultats donnent lieu à de nouvelles généralisations sur le placement, l’alignement, la sémantique et les fonctions du rire, soulignant le haute niveau des compétences pragmatiques impliquées dans sa production et sa perception. Le développement de l'utilisation sémantique et pragmatique du rire est observé dans une étude de corpus longitudinale de 4 dyades mère-enfant de l’age de 12 à 36 mois, locuteurs d’anglais américain. Les résultats montrent que l'utilisation du rire subit un développement important à chaque niveau analysé et que le rire peut être un indicateur précoce du développement cognitif, communicatif et social Laughter is a social vocalization universal across cultures and languages. It is ubiquitous in our dialogues and able to serve a wide range of functions. Laughter has been studied from several perspectives, but the classifications proposed are hard to integrate. Despite being crucial in our daily interaction, relatively little attention has been devoted to the study of laughter in conversation, attempting to model its sophisticated pragmatic use, neuro-correlates in perception and development in children. In the current thesis a new comprehensive framework for laughter analysis is proposed, crucially grounded in the assumption that laughter has propositional content, arguing for the need to distinguish different layers of analysis, similarly to the study of speech: form, positioning, semantics and pragmatics. A formal representation of laughter meaning is proposed and a multilingual corpus study (French, Chinese and English) is conducted in order to test the proposed framework and to deepen our understanding of laughter use in adult conversation. Preliminary investigations are conducted on the viability of a laughter form-function mapping based on acoustic features and on the neuro-correlates involved in the perception of laughter serving different functions in natural dialogue. Our results give rise to novel generalizations about the placement, alignment, semantics and function of laughter, stressing the high pragmatic skills involved in its production and perception. The development of the semantic and pragmatic use of laughter is observed in a longitudinal corpus study of 4 American-English child-mother pairs from 12 to 36 months of age. Results show that laughter use undergoes important development at each level analysed, which complies with what could be hypothesised on the base of phylogenetic data, and that laughter can be an effective means to track cognitive/communicative development, and potential difficulties or delays at a very early stage

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Gagné, Andréanne. "Narrative discourse in French-speaking school-age children with and without specific language impairment : development, factors contributing to competency, and pragmatics." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=115868.

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This thesis is comprised of three manuscripts, each concerned with the narrative abilities of school-aged French-speaking children as assessed with the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI). The three studies involved the same three groups of participants: one group of 12 children with SLI between the ages of eight year three months and nine year nine months, 12 typically-developing children of the same age and 12 typically-developing children matched on language abilities. Each child completed narrative tasks, language abilities tasks and cognitive tasks during one experimental session at their home. The first manuscript compares the ENNI narrative production (story grammar and referential expression) of school-aged French-speaking children to those of English-speaking children of the same age. It also provides data on the use of the ENNI with the school-aged French-speaking population with specific language impairment (SLI) by comparing their performance to the performance of their typically-developing (TD) peers. The second manuscript aims to identify which linguistic and cognitive skills contribute to narrative production of children with and without SLI at two levels: the micro- and the macro- levels. Finally, the third manuscript investigates the impact of variations in syntactic demand on the narratives produced by French-speaking children with SLI in comparison to the narratives produced by their age- and language- matched peers. The discussion summarizes the characteristics of French-speaking children's narrative production, the factors contributing to competency in narrative production, and explores the implications of these findings for language processing of children with and without SLI.

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Högberg, Hanna. "Investigating developmental effects in and-enrichment." Thesis, Linköping University, Department of Computer and Information Science, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-251.

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Two propositions connected by and have the same truth-value, irrespective of the order of the conjuncts. However, in a sentence like “I put my socks and shoes on” it becomes obvious that the order of the conjuncts affects the meaning of the sentence. This study concerns the contribution of pragmatics to and by implicit enrichment to and then or and thus. It includes three experiments that investigate and-enrichment in adults and children. Nine five-line stories concerning everyday events were used. After each story the participants were to respond “yes” or “no” to a statement which referred to two events that occurred in the story, conjoined with and. In the critical statement, the two events were presented in the inverse order to which they had occurred. The results show no general developmental effect but awareness of the task plays a critical role for and-enrichment production. Ten-year-olds enrich and to the same extent as adults when no efforts are made to mask the intention behind the task. However, when a more spontaneous response is captured by masking the purpose of the task children respond more logically. There are no clear evidence that and-enrichment is affected by the cognitive demands of the task.

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Brantley, Mary Katherine. "Re-framing the Specificity Debate in the Lansod Sector around Pragmatics : an Action Research Project Exploring the Development of Flexible Pragmatic Skills instead of “General English” for Second-year Students in Culture and Media." Thesis, Lille 3, 2020. http://www.theses.fr/2020LIL3H020.

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Cette recherche-action concerne le contenu et les objectifs langagiers dans le secteur de Langues pour spécialistes d'autres disciplines (LANSAD). Les discussions sur le contenu de ces cours se focalisent souvent sur le niveau de spécificité adapté pour ces cours en lien avec une perspective de langue sur objectifs spécifiques. Cependant, dans ce travail nous remettons en question l´utilité d´un continuum de spécificité avec d’un côté la langue spécifique et de l´autre la langue générale, notamment à cause de l'ambiguïté du terme « langue générale. » Nous suggérons que le développement d'une compétence pragmatique flexible est un objectif plus pertinent que « langue générale » pour les groupes d'étudiants avec des besoins langagiers variés ou imprévisibles. Pour explorer ces propos, nous avons choisi le contexte des cours d´anglais pour étudiants en deuxième année de la licence Culture et Médias à l’Université de Lille en raison des besoins variés des étudiants, et nous avons mis en place une série d'initiatives pédagogiques basées sur l´analyse et la description de textes de différents genres pour développer la compétence pragmatique flexible des étudiants. Nos résultats montrent que notre approche a suscité des réflexions pragmatiques intéressantes même si les notions de genre et contexte nous ont posé plus de problèmes qu´anticipé. Comme le domaine de la pragmatique produit des approches à l'étude de la communication et du contexte, nous concluons que ce domaine propose des perspectives utiles pour le contenu des cours en Lansad, en particulier en termes des perspectives qu'il offre sur la spécificité This action research-based doctoral thesis concerns course content and language-learning objectives in the sector of L2 teaching in France for students in higher education who are not specializing in that language, a sector known as Languages for Specialists of Other Disciplines (LANSOD). Discussions about LANSOD course content often refer to the appropriate degree of specificity for these classes in line with a Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) perspective. However, in this work, we will question the utility of a specificity continuum ranging from “general” to specific” language teaching, particularly due to the ambiguity of the concept of “general language.” Instead, we will suggest that the development of flexible pragmatic skills is a more pertinent objective than “general language skills” for groups of students with undetermined or varied language needs. In order to explore this argument, we selected a classroom of second-year undergraduate students in the field of Culture and Media at the University of Lille because of the students’ varied needs and implemented a series of pedagogical initiatives based on genre-based text analysis and description to develop the students’ flexible pragmatic competence in English. Results show that our approach elicited a variety of interesting pragmatic insights from students even though the notions of genre and context proved more difficult to deal with than we had foreseen. Since the field of pragmatics is producing increasingly sophisticated approaches to the study of communication and context, we conclude that this field offers promising insights for LANSOD course content specification, particularly with regards to the lens that it offers on specificity

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Vento-Wilson, Margaret. "The Intersection of Speech-Language Pathologists’ Beliefs, Perceptions, and Practices and the Language Acquisition and Development of Emerging Aided Communicators." Chapman University Digital Commons, 2019. https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/education_dissertations/4.

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This dissertation discusses the convergence of aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems, the language acquisition and development of young children who are minimally verbal or nonverbal who acquire their native language while simultaneously learning to use an aided AAC system, and explicit and implicit elements that influence language outcomes. Factors investigated include those related to language acquisition universals, the AAC system, the young aided AAC user, and practices, philosophies, and beliefs of speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Further examined were: (a) language acquisition parallels in atypical populations who do not possess the full range of senses who have been shown to develop language, and (b) analogies between the linguistic structures of pidgins, interlanguages, and the syntax of young aided AAC users. This dissertation employed a survey methodology to capture the practices and beliefs of SLPs as a means of identifying potential contributing factors to the reduced linguistic outcomes of these children. Quantitative findings revealed statistically significant differences in SLPs’ perceptions of confidence and qualification with the two populations of children with language impairments who use an oral modality and young aided AAC users. Descriptive trends across all constructs measured suggested differences in SLPs’ practices, belifes, and perspectives in their work with these two populations. The analysis of the syntactic structures of the language of young aided AAC users revealed definitive parallels with the construct of interlanguages.

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Wong, Tze-Peng. "Changes in the conversational skills of preschool children with complex developmental difficulties." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Communication Disorders, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/6828.

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Caregiver-child conversation is an important platform for children’s development of language and conversational skills and can form the basis for an approach to intervention for children with pragmatic difficulties. While most intervention studies have focused on reporting overall improvements in children’s language and conversational skills as a result of changes in caregiver behaviour, there is limited fine-grained understanding of children’s ability to achieve conversational topic contingency as a result of specific changes in their caregivers’ use of conversational topic turns and/or the facilitative techniques employed by therapists. The studies described in this thesis aim to address this limitation. The following questions are raised: (i) What is the impact of caregiver training intervention programmes on caregivers’ conversational topic turns and facilitative techniques? (ii) What is the impact of caregiver training intervention programmes on children’s conversational topic turns? and (iii) How do specific facilitative techniques impact children’s conversational skills? The first part of this thesis involves establishing the methodology for data transcription and data coding used in the four studies conducted for this thesis. Conversational recordings were transcribed using the CHAT format and conventions. Then a conversational coding system and a facilitative technique coding system were used to code the communicative acts transcribed. The conversational acts coded were topic change (TC), topic extension (TE), topic maintaining responses (TM), and non-relevant responses (NR). The facilitative techniques coded were imitation, expansion, follow-in questions, and follow-in cloze procedures. Inter-rater reliability levels of the transcription and coding of conversational acts and facilitative techniques were high. Study 1 (presented in Chapter 3) was designed to investigate changes following an ‘It Takes Two to Talk’ Hanen programme in the conversations of four caregiver-child dyads where the children had identified language delay. It employed a single subject design and the outcome measures were analysed in three phases: baseline, intervention and follow-up. The outcome measures were the rates of (i) caregivers’ conversational topic turns (i.e., TC, TE and TM), (ii) caregivers’ facilitative techniques (i.e., imitation, expansion, follow-in questions, and follow-in cloze procedures) and (iii) children’s conversational topic turns (i.e., TC, TE and TM). Results showed that all caregivers produced fewer TCs and higher rates of facilitative techniques, while all children produced significantly more TEs following intervention. Individual caregiver patterns of change appeared to be reflected in their children’s conversational skills. This study supports the effectiveness of caregiver group training programmes in improving the quality of caregiver-child conversations and highlighted the importance of investigating individual variations in intervention. Study 2 (presented in Chapter 4) was designed to investigate the changes in conversational skills of three children with features of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) following the dyads’ participation in caregiver-child individual training as part of a multidisciplinary programme for children with ASD. This study employed a case series design and the outcome measures were analysed in two phases (i.e., intervention and follow-up). Similar to Study 1, the outcome measures were rates of the (i) caregivers’ conversational topic turns (i.e., TC, TE and TM), (ii) caregivers’ facilitative techniques (i.e., imitation, expansion, follow-in questions, and follow-in cloze procedures) and (iii) children’s conversational topic turns (i.e., TC, TE and TM). Results of Study 2 showed that one of the three caregivers decreased the rates of TC, and one of them increased the rates of TM following intervention. The caregivers also increased their rates of facilitative techniques (i.e., imitation, expansion and follow-in questions). Concurrently, the children whose caregivers showed positive changes following intervention increased their rates of TCs and TMs. Consistent with the findings of Study 1, high individual variations were observed in the changes exhibited by the caregivers. Study 2 supports the effectiveness of individual training programmes in improving the quality of caregiver-child conversations and emphasizes the importance of investigating individual variations in intervention. Study 3 (presented in Chapter 5) was designed to investigate the qualitative changes made by a child from each of the first two studies. The two children presented with different language levels and aetiologies but both were receiving individualised programmes designed to enhance their conversational abilities. Taking a functional approach to communication development, Study 3 examined how each child (i) collaborated on an activity; (ii) expanded an activity; and (iii) returned to a previous activity or proposed a new activity, through conversational topic turns. Results suggest that the children learnt to collaborate on and expand activities through their caregivers’ repeated use of contingent topic turns (i.e., TM and TE) and facilitative techniques (i.e., expansion, follow-in questions and follow-in cloze procedures). However, they tended to return to a previous activity or propose a new activity when they did not attend to the preceding act or topic, seemed to not comprehend or were not interested in the preceding act or topic, or when their caregivers failed to attend to their preceding act or topic. These findings highlights that while caregivers’ topic turns that are contingent and facilitative help children to advance their activities, caregivers’ topic turns that are non-contingent have the potential to cause the children to end the preceding activity and switch to another activity. Study 4 was designed to compare the effectiveness of expansion, as a technique for facilitating children’s conversational topic turns, with expansion combined with other techniques when implemented by speech and language therapists (SLTs). Using a repeated measures design, this study aimed to compare the effects of expansion alone (EA); expansion combined with wh-questions (EQ); and expansion followed by a cloze procedure (EC) on the conversational skills of eight preschool children with conversational difficulties in conversation with their regular speech-language therapists (SLTs). Results showed that while there were no significant differences in child verbal topic maintaining responses across all techniques, EA elicited a significantly higher number of TEs, more non-verbal TMs and fewer NRs from the children, than either EQ or EC. The positive effects of each technique on the pragmatic appropriateness in conversations suggest that they could be used strategically in language intervention to enhance therapeutic effect. This thesis suggests that caregiver training programmes that focus on following the child’s lead and support caregivers and therapists to use contingent topic turns and facilitative techniques have positive outcomes for children’s conversational development. It also suggested that caregivers’ and therapists’ facilitative strategies that do not obligate responses from the child (i.e., expansion) have better potentials to help the child to expand the scope of conversations than strategies that obligate a response from the child (i.e., wh-questions and cloze procedures). Finally this thesis suggests that family-focussed intervention that follows the child’s lead appears likely to improve the conversational skills of children with a range of diagnoses by helping to address the common underlying features of conversational difficulties.

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Rylander, John William. "EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION OF SPEECH ACTS AS ACTION SEQUENCE EVENTS: A VIDEO-BASED METHOD." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2017. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/474057.

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Applied Linguistics Ph.D. This research involves three separate studies with the goal of investigating learner increases in the pragmatic awareness when exposed to various degrees of sustained, explicit instruction. Operationalized as a composite construct in the theory of communicative competence, pragmatic awareness includes knowledge of pragmalinguistic forms and sociopragmatic features, with sequential action events representing the former and relationship status categories the latter. Research questions for each study focus on gains learners revealed on a video-based pragmatic awareness assessment instrument delivered in pretest-posttest format. Data collection occurred from fall semester 2013 to spring semester 2015 in one single-sex junior/senior high school and two co-educational universities, one with a first-year focus group and the other with a second-year group, with participates across the contexts enrolled in 1 of 12 intact classes ranging in size from 23 to 33. At each site, data collection included response behaviors for comparison counterfactual groups. Data for the primary analyses of each study were subjected to a one-way ANCOVA. Results revealed a significant difference between the treatment group performances compared to a counterfactual group from each institution: Study 1, F(1,152) = 5.86, p = 0.02; Study 2, F(34, 115.28) = 5.71, p = 0.02; and Study 3, F(3, 77.30) = 8.04, p < 0.00. Relationship strength between the factor levels and the dependent variable, as measured in partial eta squared, accounted for 4%, 14%, and 16% of the variance, respectively. In Study 3 a Bayesian confirmatory analysis revealed that the least explicit treatment, one involving only a focus on pragmalinguistic input, showed the greatest gains. Implications for the three studies are: (a) pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic categories reveal difficulty hierarchies, with particular sequential action events and relationship status categories consistently more challenging than others; (b) learners display differential awareness of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic sub-constructs, with the former registered as more difficult; and (c) explicit instruction on a limited number of pragmalinguistic categories might result in spillover learning effects to other, untaught categories. Temple University--Theses

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Jejo, Sara, and Sanaa Haji. "Teaching Strategies to Increase EFL Speaking Skills in a Communicative Learning Environment." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-31617.

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AbstractEven though developing speaking skills is the essential key to achieving proficiency in a target language, there are some pupils (grades 4-6) who do not participate in communication tasks in English classroom. Thus, the purpose of this literature overview is to investigate the reasons for the unwillingness of some young learners to speak and interact in English. In addition, a variety of effective teaching strategies will be observed and analyzed. The used methods were different electronic databases, such as ERC, ERIC and Google Scholar, to access relevant peer-reviewed journal articles to our research questions. The observed and analyzed articles showed that there are some pupils who do not interact because English teachers often focus too much on reading and writing skills rather than on speaking skills. The limitation of communication tasks and large classroom sizes are other mitigating factors. In addition, teachers often using the first language in class resulted in pupils doing the same. This contributes to a lack of motivation and confidence in speaking English for some learners. This study identifies teaching strategies and activities that can be used by the teacher to raise motivation and confidence in speaking English. Results have indicated that the use of Vygotsky's sociocultural learning theory was very useful to involve every pupil in authentic communication tasks, which also provided a supportive communicative environment. Task-based and theme-based learning, such as stories, songs, games, project work and pair work is shown to be beneficial to increase pupils’ motivation towards speaking.

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Yiaueki, Sequoya. "Action, meaning, and argument : a development of pragmatist, expressivist, and inferentialist themes in Eric Weil's Logique de la philosophie." Thesis, Lille 3, 2020. https://pepite-depot.univ-lille.fr/RESTREINT/EDSHS/2020/2020LIL3H008_texte.pdf.

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La thèse, intitulée « Action, Meaning, and Argument: A Development of Pragmatist, Expressivist, and Inferentialist Themes in Éric Weil’s Logique de la Philosophie », s’intéresse à la manière novatrice dont Éric Weil conceptualise la violence dans la tradition philosophique, surtout le rapport entre violence, langage et discours. La violence, pour Weil, est le problème central de la philosophie. Il conçoit le développement historique du discours philosophique comme la tentative de saisir le monde, l’individu, le sens et l’action humaine de manière à ce que la violence puisse être réduite. Pourtant, la raison pour laquelle la violence est un problème central, c’est que même si elle peut être réduite, elle ne peut jamais être complètement éliminée. La violence, autant que le langage, est une expression de la spontanéité humaine, elle fait partie de la capacité que chaque individu a de créer du sens dans le monde. La manière dont Weil caractérise le problème revient à dire que l’individu se trouve toujours devant un choix libre (à savoir non-justifié et non-justifiable) entre la raison et la violence. La tradition philosophique ne peut ni supprimer ce choix, ni ses conséquences radicales. Toutefois, le choix de la raisonnabilité est aussi irréductible que le choix de la violence. En d’autres termes, dans n’importe quelle situation, l’individu peut toujours refuser la violence et le non-sens et s’élever pour saisir sa situation d’une manière cohérente. Afin d’expliquer cette possibilité, Weil organise son propre discours philosophique autour des concepts d’attitude et de catégorie. Les attitudes correspondent à la saisie implicite du sens dans l’existence concrète des individus, dans leur compréhension du monde, dans leurs pratiques et leurs institutions. Les catégories sont la saisie explicite de ce sens dans un discours.En articulant les attitudes et les catégories dans les termes de l’implicite et de l’explicite, on voit apparaître une similarité frappante entre la position de Weil et l’inférentialisme de Robert Brandom. L’inférentialisme cherche également à rendre explicite en discours ce qui est implicite dans les pratiques. Dans ce but, l’inférentialisme de Brandom, s’inspirant de Wilfrid Sellars, crée un programme sophistiqué à la jonction de la pragmatique et de la sémantique, la philosophie du langage, la logique et la philosophie de l’esprit. Le programme inférentialiste vise à expliquer la notion d’engagement discursif à partir d’un ordre d’explication pragmatiste qui remplace le représentationalisme en philosophie du langage par un expressivisme. La thèse, Action, Meaning, and Argument, part de ces apports afin de montrer la manière dont une lecture pragmatiste, expressiviste et inférentialiste de Weil n’est pas seulement possible, mais aussi très féconde tant pour les études weiliennes que pour l’inférentialisme. En un mot, cette lecture croisée a pour ambition de montrer que chacune de ces deux théories ajoute quelque chose d’essentiel à l’autre théorie. L’inférentialisme fournit un appareil technique permettant de clarifier certaines des conceptions centrales de Weil, notamment la manière dont sa théorie devrait être considérée comme s’articulant elle aussi autour de l’engagement discursif. Ce que la conceptualisation de la violence par Weil ajoute à l’inférentialisme, c’est l’idée que toute théorie de l’engagement discursif doit prendre en compte l’aspect conflictuel des engagements concrets afin de comprendre que la possibilité de la violence est toujours présente dans notre langage et dans nos pratiques discursives The dissertation, Action, Meaning, and Argument: A Development of Pragmatist, Expressivist, and Inferentialist Themes in Éric Weil’s Logique de la Philosophie, investigates Éric Weil’s innovative conceptualization of the place of violence in the philosophical tradition, particularly violence’s relationship to language and discourse. Weil presents violence as the central problem of philosophy. In fact, he sees the historic development of philosophical discourse as an attempt to grasp the world, the individual, meaning, human action in such ways that violence can be reduced. The reason that violence is a central problem is that although it can be reduced it can never be eliminated. Violence, as much as language, is an expression of human freedom, and makes up the individual’s capacity to create meaning in the world. The way Weil characterizes the problem is that the individual is constantly before a free (unjustified and unjustifiable) choice between reason and violence. The philosophical tradition cannot suppress this choice, nor its radical consequences. The individual can always abandon reason and reasonable action for violence. However, the choice to be reasonable is as irreducible as the choice of violence. In other words, in any situation the individual can always refuse violence and refuse meaninglessness and raise themself up in order to grasp their situation coherently. In order to explain how this happens, Weil organizes his own philosophical discourse around attitudes and categories. Attitudes correspond to the implicit grasp of meaning that individual have in the concrete existence of their lives, in their understanding of the world, in their practices, and in their institutions. Categories are the explicit grasp of this meaning in discourse.By articulating attitudes and categories in terms of the implicit and explicit, there is a striking similarity to be drawn with the inferentialist tradition as represented by Robert Brandom. Inferentialism also seeks to make what is implicit in practices explicit in discourse. To this end, Brandom’s inferentialism, taking inspiration from Wilfrid Sellars, creates a sophisticated program at the junction of pragmatics and semantics, philosophy of language, logic, and philosophy of mind. This program aims at explaining the notion of discursive commitment starting from a pragmatist order of explanation by replacing representationalism in philosophy of language for expressivism. The dissertation Action, Meaning, and Argument builds on these insights in order to show how a pragmatist, expressivist, and inferentialist reading of Éric Weil is not just possible but is also particularly fruitful for both Weilian studies and for inferentialism. In a word, this cross-reading aims to show that each of these two theories add something essential to the other. Inferentialism provides a technical apparatus that allows certain of Weil’s key moves to become clearer, namely how to also see Weil’s theory as one which turns around the notion of discursive commitment. What Weil’s conceptualization of violence adds to inferentialism is the idea that any theory of discursive commitment must take the conflictual aspect of concrete commitments into account, in order to understand the possibility of violence that is always present in our language and in our discursive practices

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Falk, Erik. "Verbala förolämpningar i 1630-talets Uppsala : En historisk talaktsanalys." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för nordiska språk, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-156909.

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This thesis investigates verbal insults recorded in judicial protocols in the Swedish university townUppsaladuring the 1630s. The aim of the study is to analyze insults as linguistic formulations and social acts in Early Modern Swedish society. The methodology of the study is guided by speech act theory and ethnography of communication in order to examine the lexical realizations of insults and verbal action in different speech communities. From a total of 652 protocols in two series of records from the city court and the university council inUppsalain the 1630s, sections of text were excerpted that registered insults. The material under investigation comprises 179 cases that contained 276 insults. The descriptive meta-linguistic expressions for insults are rich as well as varied, and the performed insults are reported with or without invectives and as direct or indirect speech. Clear patterns emerged in the investigation by performing various semantic-, pragmatic-, and discourse-level analyses of the judicial records. Insults among city people were commonly interpreted as truth-conditional representative speech acts and thereby were viewed as false accusations of various kinds. In the academic world, however, the truth value of the insult was of minor importance. The speech act was regarded mainly as an expressive utterance of anger and frustration. Through a comparison of the city and university judicial records, it is shown that the patterns of insults reveal a general semantic process in which primarily concrete, objective meanings come to fulfill increasingly interpersonal and pragmatic speech functions.

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Esteve, Gibert Núria. "The integration of prosody and gesture in early intentional communication." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/284226.

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This dissertation comprises four experimental studies which investigate the way infants integrate prosody and gesture for intentional communicative purposes. As adult speakers we automatically integrate prosody and gestures at a temporal and pragmatic level, and we use these cues together with social contextual information to convey and understand intentional meanings. My aim is to investigate whether infants use prosodic and gesture features in an integrated way for communicative purposes prior to their use of lexical-semantic cues. The dissertation includes four studies, each one described in a separate chapter. The first study is a longitudinal analysis of how a group of infants produce gesture and speech combinations in natural interactions, with results that show that already at 12 and 15 months of age infants temporally align prosodic and gesture prominences. The second study uses a habituation/test procedure to test the infants‟ early sensitivity to temporal gesture-prosodic integration, showing that 9-month-old infants are sensitive to the alignment between prosodic and gesture prominences. The third study analyzes the longitudinal productions of four infants at the pre-lexical stage and provides evidence that infants use prosodic cues such as pitch range and duration to convey specific intentions like requests, statements, responses, and expressions of satisfaction or discontent. Finally, the fourth study examines how infants responded at 12 months of age to different types of pointing-speech combinations and shows that x infants use prosodic and gestural cues to comprehend communicative intentions behind an attention-directing act. Altogether, this dissertation shows that the temporal integration of gesture and speech occurs at the early stages of language and cognitive development, and that pragmatic uses of prosody and gesture develop before infants master the use of lexical cues. Thus, prosody is the first grammatical component of language that infants use for communicative purposes, revealing that linguistic communication emerges before infants have the ability to use lexical items with semantic meanings. I further claim that infants‟ integration of prosody and gesture at the temporal and pragmatic levels is a reflex of an early emergence of language pragmatics. Aquesta tesi inclou quatre estudis experimentals que investiguen com els infants integren prosòdia i gestualitat amb fins comunicatius. Els adults integrem la prosòdia i la gestualitat de manera temporal i pragmàtica i, juntament amb la informació sociocontextual, ho utilitzem per a transmetre i comprendre significats intencionals. En aquesta tesi es pretén investigar si els infants utilitzen la prosòdia i la gestualitat de manera integrada per a fins comunicatius, abans de ser capaços d‟emprar elements lexicosemàntics. La tesi inclou quatre estudis, cada un en un apartat diferent. El primer estudi analitza longitudinalment les combinacions de gest i parla dels infants en interaccions espontànies, i mostra que a partir dels 12 o 15 mesos els infants alineen temporalment la prominència prosòdica i la prominència gestual. El segon estudi empra el mètode d‟habituació/test per a comprovar l‟habilitat primerenca dels infants a percebre la integració temporal entre prosòdia i gest, i mostra que als 9 mesos els infants ja són capaços de percebre l‟alineació temporal entre la prominència gestual i la prosòdica. El tercer estudi també analitza longitudinalment les produccions dels infants en interaccions espontànies per a mostrar que, abans de produir les primeres paraules, els infants ja utilitzen elements prosòdics com el rang tonal i la durada, a més del gest, per a transmetre actes de parla com ara la petició, les respostes, les oracions declaratives, i les expressions de satisfacció o de descontentament. Finalment, el quart xii estudi investiga la reacció dels infants a diversos tipus de combinacions de parla i gest d‟assenyalar, i mostra que els infants de 12 mesos utilitzen les marques prosòdiques i gestuals del discurs per a entendre les intencions comunicatives que els són dirigides. En conjunt, aquesta tesi mostra que la integració temporal de prosòdia i gest ocorre en les etapes més primerenques del desenvolupament lingüístic i cognitiu, i que el usos pragmàtics de la prosòdia i la gestualitat emergeixen abans que els infants dominin l‟ús d‟elements lèxics. Així, la prosòdia és el primer component gramatical del llenguatge que els infants utilitzen amb finalitat comunicativa, cosa que indica que la comunicació lingüística emergeix abans que els infants tinguin la capacitat de produir ítems lèxics amb significants semàntics. La conclusió general és, doncs, que la integració temporal i pragmàtica de la prosòdia i el gest per part dels infants indica el desenvolupament primerenc de la pragmàtica lingüística.

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Batista, Aurore. "Le développement multimodal de la communication au cours de la petite enfance : étude en contexte francophone." Thesis, Grenoble, 2012. http://www.theses.fr/2012GRENL035/document.

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L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier le développement communicationnel multimodal des jeunes enfants français âgés de 18 mois à 3 ans et demi. Nous nous concentrons donc autant sur l'apparition et le développement des gestes et des combinaisons bimodales alliant un geste et un (ou plusieurs) mot(s) que sur celui de la langue et tâchons d'étudier le rôle du geste dans les étapes précoces de l'acquisition du langage. L'intérêt de cette recherche est qu'elle fait un pont entre (1) les recherches sur la gestualité du jeune enfant durant la période pré-verbale ainsi que sur son entrée dans la période verbale (l'arrivée des énoncés à un mot et deux mots dans ses productions) et (2) les recherches sur l'enfant d'âge scolaire (6 ans et plus) et l'adulte, qui communiquent tous deux en utilisant leur langue maternelle et des gestes co-verbaux. Notre corpus est constitué de 154 vidéos de jeunes enfants en train de jouer avec un ensemble ludique comportant une maison et des personnages en situation de jeu triadique (en présence d'un adulte). Notre premier objectif consistait à vérifier l'hypothèse que la production des gestes communicationnels et l'émergence des combinaisons bimodales annonce l'arrivée des énoncés à deux mots (comme cela a été déjà montré pour les enfants italiens et américains). En fait, il apparaît que ce processus s'étend au-delà des énoncés à deux mots, car ces combinaisons geste+Xmots apparaissent toujours avant les énoncés X+1mot. Il semble donc que le geste joue un rôle dans le développement des verbalisations enfantines avant d'être utilisé comme co-verbal chez l'enfant plus âgé et chez l'adulte. Notre second objectif consistait à observer, qualitativement, l'évolution des conduites communicatives lors de situations de jeux triadique, et plus précisément à voir sur quelles ressources communicationnelles s'appuie l'enfant pour exprimer des suites d'événements (scripts liés à son activité ludique) qui nécessitent non pas une seule, mais deux ou plusieurs prédications. Là encore, il apparaît que les gestes et les combinaisons bimodales sont intégrées aux premières tentatives de verbalisation. Ce travail confirme que le geste joue bien un rôle dans le développement linguistique enfantin. Une meilleure connaissance de ces gestes nous permettra donc une meilleure connaissance du développement de l'enfant et nous aidera à repérer plus efficacement et plus précocement les troubles développementaux de l'enfant. De plus, s'il existe déjà des indices pour mesurer le développement des performances linguistiques, cette recherche soulève la question de la création d'un indice pouvant mesurer les performances communicationnelles multimodales enfantines, c'est-à-dire la création d'un indice prenant en compte l'intégralité des ressources sémiotiques mobilisées par l'enfant et pas seulement la langue The aim of this thesis is to study the development of multimodal communication in young French children aged from 18 months to 3 years and a half while acquiring the French language. We will focus on the emergence and development of gestures, gesture-word combinations and language and will try to understand the role of gesture in the early stages of language acquisition. The interest of this research is that it fills the gap between (1) research on the young child first gestures during the pre-verbal period and the period during which he begins to acquire his mother tongue (the appearance of one-word and two-words sets in his productions) AND (2) research about older children (age 6 and older) and adults who both communicate using their mother tongue and co-speech gestures. Our corpus is composed of 154 videos of young children playing with an adult and a house game set (triadic situation). Using these data, we first wanted to test the hypothesis that the production of communicative gestures and the emergence of gesture-word combinations both predict the production of two-words speech in young children (as it has already been shown for Italian and American children). In fact, our results point to a more general developmental scheme with gesture+Xwords combination always preceding the upcoming of X+1words verbal utterances. Gesture use does play a role in the development of language at early stages as well as at later stages, when the child begins to produce long sentences (composed of more than two words) and combines them with co-speech gestures. Our second objective was to observe qualitative changes in the child's communicative behavior in a triadic situation, and more precisely to study the communicative resources the child uses to express sequences of events (scripts related to playful activities) which require not one, but two or more predicates. Again, it appears that gestures and bimodal combinations are integrated within the first attempts to produce verbalizations. This work confirms that gesture use does play a role in language development. A better understanding of these gestures will allow us a better understanding of child development and help us to identify earlier and more effectively developmental disorders in children. In addition, if there already is an index to measure the development of language performance, this research questions the creation of an index that can assess the multimodal communicative performance, that is to say the creation of an index taking into account all the semiotic resources mobilized by the child and not just verbal language

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Briec, Julie. "Implant cochléaire et dévelppement du langage chez les jeunes enfants sourds profonds." Phd thesis, Université Rennes 2, 2012. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00775862.

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La présente thèse se compose de trois études en lien avec le développement du langage chez les enfants sourds profonds porteurs d'un implant cochléaire. La première étude a pu mettre en lumière le développement des échanges conversationnels chez un groupe de 28 enfants implantés sur une période de deux ans suivant l'implantation. La tendancerelevée est un développement des habilités conversationnelles vers un profil plus autonome et actif ; en particulier, nous notons que les enfants implantés ne se distinguent plus significativement des enfants entendants du même âge en ce qui concerne les initiatives deux ans après l'implantation. La deuxième étude se proposait, quant à elle, d'explorer la question des différences interindividuelles. C'est chez un groupe de 21 enfants sourds profonds, implantés depuis en moyenne 6 ans 1 mois, que l'origine des différences interindividuelles au niveau du lexique (réception et production) a été mise enquestion. Il ressort que les facteurs " âge à l'implantation " et " timidité de l'enfant " jouent un rôle dans ces différences : une implantation précoce et un faible niveau de timidité chez l'enfant apparaissent en effet favoriser le développement dulexique. Enfin, la troisième étude s'intéressait à l'ajustement mutuel, variable fondamentale lorsqu'on s'intéresse au développement du langage dans une perspective socio‐constructiviste. Il s'agissait, à l'aide d'une méthodologie originale inspirée de la théorie des systèmes dynamiques, d'analyser l'évolution de l'ajustement mutuel chez 23 dyades enfantimplanté/mère entendante au cours d'un suivi longitudinal de deux années. Nos résultats confirment l'influence positive de l'implant cochléaire dans la mise en place d'échanges harmonieux entre les enfants implantés et leur mère, traduisantl'acquisition d'habilités conversationnelles importantes pour le développement ultérieur de la langue de l'enfant

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Wang, Xun. "The Change and the Development of the Chinese Euphemisms : A Study Based on a Survey of the Use of Euphemisms byRespondents of Different Age Groups." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Kinesiska, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-27203.

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The Chinese euphemisms have aroused much interest of many researches due to its distinctive function and diversity. The choice and use of Chinese euphemisms are affected by many factors such as the Chinese traditional culture, social customs, people’s self-cultivation, the situation context and linguistic context of a conversation, etc. Hence, the progress of society, the development of technology and the renewing of the concept make up the dynamic characteristic of the Chinese euphemisms. However, most studies focus mainly on the vocabulary people use and their expressing habits and patterns, there are few studies focus on how Chinese euphemisms develop along with the times. Studies that shed light on how modern people use broad euphemisms and narrow euphemisms are even less. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to collect linguistic materials and design a questionnaire to make a survey on the current situation of using euphemisms by respondents of different age groups. The result of this survey shows that modern people are not only becoming less and less indirect in terms of the scope of using euphemisms, but also less and less tactful in terms of the vocabulary that they use. This phenomenon can be observed when people talk about topics such as death, disease, appearance, unemployment, marriage and privacy. Modern people tend to be relatively low decoratively worded. In other words, people are to some extent becoming less indirect and less tactful. This paper verifies the adaptability as well as the updating and upgrading of Chinese euphemisms. It also discusses the linguistic diversity of modern people in terms of using broad and narrow euphemisms under different contexts. This paper will not only help us to understand how Chinese language adapts to the change with the times, but also digs deeper into the great role that social culture plays in language development. 汉语委婉语的功能鲜明、灵活多变，引起了很多研究的兴趣。汉语委婉语的选择和使用受到中国的传统文化、社会风俗，人自身的修养内涵、情景和语境等多方面因素的影响，并伴随着社会的发展、科技的进步、观念的转变而处于一个动态的变化过程。然而，目前的研究对委婉语的词汇、表达方式及表达规律探讨的比较多，但是对汉语委婉语基于时代变化的研究则较少，特别是对于在现代社会的日常交谈中，人们具体如何使用狭义和广义委婉语，以及探讨他们在委婉语使用方面出现了哪些变化的研究则更少了。因此，本论文旨在搜集语言素材并设计问卷，对不同年龄段的人委婉语的使用现状做一个问卷调查。调查数据的结果表明，在现代社会的日常交谈中，不同年龄段的人使用汉语委婉语的范围不仅缩小了，并且委婉程度也有一定的降低。具体体现为在死、病、相貌、失业、婚姻、隐私等话题下，人们现在倾向于使用修饰性较低，或者说委婉程度较低的委婉语。本论文验证了委婉语的顺应性和更新替代性，并具体阐述了在现代社会的日常交谈中，不同年龄段的人在不同语境下对广义和狭义委婉语选择的多样性。因此，本论文不仅有助于理解汉语随时代变迁发展变化的趋势，也有助于更深入的理解社会文化在语言发展中发挥的巨大作用。

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Witten, Caryn Marie. "The effects of input enhancement and interactive video viewing on the development of pragmatic awareness and use in the beginning Spanish L2 classroom." Thesis, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3108535.

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Vyatkina, Nina A. "Development of second language pragmatic competence the data-driven teaching of German modal particles based on a learner corpus /." 2007. http://www.etda.libraries.psu.edu/theses/approved/WorldWideIndex/ETD-1928/index.html.

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Mašín, Jaroslav. "Lingvistická pragmatika ve výuce češtiny jako cizího jazyka." Doctoral thesis, 2015. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-336156.

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The focus of dissertation belongs to the field of learning Czech as a foreign language and deals with the acquisition of pragmatic competence of non-native speakers. Whereas this is a broad area, the work concentrates on speech act request. The aim is to describe how two students of Czech acquired the speech act during a one-year intensive course. The theoretical background is given in Chapter I. The term Interlanguage Pragmatics is introduced to Czech readers. The Chapter further maps what the pragmatic research of non- native speakers generally deals with and what questions it asks. Attention is paid to possible methods for collecting data for research of pragmatic competence, what kinds of errors non- native speakers usually make, what environment is suitable for the acquisition of pragmatic competence or how individual differences among students affects pragmatic competence. In the second chapter attention is paid to speech act request. We present an overview of major longitudinal studies. On the bass of this longitudinal research it was found that students of English go through five stages of development when acquiring request. The stages are presented here in detail. In the research part of the dissertation the investigation of how two non-native speakers (a student from Taiwan and a student...

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Liu, Chianing. "Pragmatics in foreign language instruction: the effects of pedagogical intervention and technology on the development of EFL learners' realization of "request"." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2490.

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This study investigated the effectiveness of explicit pragmatic instruction on the acquisition of requests by college-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Taiwan. The researcher applied quantitative and qualitative approaches to determine first whether the use of explicit pragmatic instruction had a positive effect on EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. Second, the relative effectiveness of presenting pragmatics through two delivery systems—face-to-face, in-class activities and computer-mediated communication (CMC) via e-mail and WebCT—was compared. One hundred and eighteen Taiwanese undergraduate students who made up three intact classes in an “English for Tourism” course completed the entire study. The three groups were: (1) the control group, in which students received no explicit instruction on pragmatics but received instructor-led lessons from the textbook’s teacher’s manual, (2) the experimental/Teacher Instruction (TI) group, in which students learned pragmatics in a face-to-face classroom setting with explicit instruction on pragmatics, and (3) the experimental/CMC group, in which students learned pragmatics explicitly through e-mail and WebCT discussions with their partners at Texas A&M University. There were 40 Taiwanese students in the control group, 36 Taiwanese students in the experimental/Teacher Instruction group and 42 Taiwanese students in the experimental/CMC group. Treatment types (Control/TI/CMC) were randomly assigned to the intact classes. The results showed that explicit pragmatic instruction had a positive impact on the EFL learners in both the Teacher Instruction and CMC groups. Learners who received explicit pragmatic instruction performed better on the Discourse Completion Task posttest than those who did not. The findings also indicated that technology can be a valuable tool for delivering pragmatics instruction.

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Chen, Shu-hui Eileen. "Pragmatic comprehension : a developmental study of Mandarin-speaking children's strategies for interpretation of given and new information." Thesis, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/9955.

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Pellet, Stéphanie Hélène. "The development of competence in French interlanguage pragmatics: the case of the discourse marker 'donc'." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/2351.

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Guimarães, Cristiana da Silva. "Avaliação das competências pragmáticas em crianças portuguesas dos 18 aos 47 meses: aferição do Language Use Inventory." Doctoral thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1822/48714.

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Tese de Doutoramento em Estudos da Criança (Especialidade em Educação Especial) A aquisição e o desenvolvimento da linguagem resultam da interação da criança com o meio ambiente. As interações sociais quotidianas com as pessoas e a comunicação com outros permitem que a criança adquira linguagem, sendo a pragmática o sistema de regras que suporta o uso comunicativo da linguagem. Perspetivando uma intervenção precoce eficaz, é crucial a identificação precoce e a avaliação de crianças em risco de desenvolverem perturbações de linguagem. Neste sentido, tendo em consideração a relevância da pragmática na comunicação e a escassez de instrumentos de avaliação da linguagem para idades precoces validados em Portugal, a finalidade deste estudo consistiu na tradução, adaptação, validação e aferição do instrumento Language Use Inventory (LUI), para Português Europeu. O LUI é um inventário parental, constituído por três partes (I – gestos; II – palavras; III – frases), que avalia o desenvolvimento das competências pragmáticas entre os 18 e os 47 meses. Para o estudo quantitativo foram adotados os procedimentos recomendados pelas diretrizes internacionais sobre a adaptação e validação de testes de linguagem, culminando num estudo piloto com uma amostra de 120 inventários e num estudo normativo com uma amostra de 1555 inventários. No respetivo estudo normativo, todos os inventários da amostra foram respondidos pelos pais/cuidadores de crianças, dentro do grupo etário dos 18 aos 47 meses, de Portugal Continental e Regiões Autónomas dos Açores e da Madeira. A análise da fiabilidade das três partes do inventário mostrou coeficientes alfa de Cronbach superiores a .80, obtendo-se coeficientes de correlação teste-reteste entre .83 e .97, afirmando a estabilidade dos resultados. Por sua vez, ao nível da validade estrutural, de acordo com a teoria, as subescalas do inventário organizaram-se em torno de dois fatores, explicando no seu conjunto 77,4% da variância dos resultados. Estes elevados índices de precisão e validade na versão portuguesa do inventário (LUI-PT) viabilizaram a sua aferição e o estabelecimento de normas para análise das competências pragmáticas de crianças portuguesas entre os 18 e os 47 meses de idade. A evolução dos resultados de acordo com a idade e a sua diferenciação de acordo com um desenvolvimento típico da linguagem ou dificuldades a este domínio, sugere a relevância deste instrumento na identificação de alterações das competências pragmáticas em idades precoces em crianças portuguesas, respondendo assim às necessidades dos profissionais que intervêm nas problemáticas relacionadas com a comunicação e linguagem. The acquisition and development of language results from the child's interaction with the environment. Social interactions with people and following communication with others allow the child to acquire language, and pragmatics is the system of rules that supports the communicative use of language. The early identification and assessment of children at risk for language disorders are crucial in order to carry out an effective early intervention. Considering the relevance of pragmatics in communication and the lack of assessment tools in Portugal to assess these abilities in early ages, one of the primary goals of this study relies on the translation, adaptation, validation and standardization of the inventory “Language Use Inventory” (LUI), to European Portuguese. LUI is a standardized parent report measure, with three parts (I – gestures; I – words; III –phrases) designed to assess the development of pragmatic skills in children within 18- to 47-month-old. All the procedures recommended by international test adaptation and validation guidelines were adopted in this quantitative study, first was implemented a pilot study with a sample of 120 inventories, and second, a normative study with a sample of 1555 inventories. In the normative study, all inventories of the sample were answered by the parents/caregivers of children within 18- to 47-month-old, from Portugal (that includes mainland and islands). The analysis of the reliability of the three parts of the inventory showed Cronbach's alpha coefficients above .80, obtaining testretest correlation coefficients between .83 and .97, stating the stability of the results. In the other turn, at the level of structural validity, according to the theory, the inventory subscales were organized around two factors that taken together can explain 77.4 % of the variance of the results. These high levels of reliability and validity of the Portuguese version of the inventory (LUI-PT) illustrates its standardization, and the establishment of standard norms for the analysis of pragmatic skills of Portuguese children between 18 and 47 months old. The growth of the results according to their age, and their differentiation according to a typical language development or difficulties in this field, suggests the relevance of this tool for the identification of pragmatic impairments in early ages, and towards the needs of all professionals in the field. Este doutoramento foi financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) no âmbito do POPH/FSE – QREN – Tipologia 4.1 – Formação Avançada, comparticipado pelo Fundo Social Europeu e por Fundos Nacionais MCTES. (Referência da bolsa: SFRH/BD/76861/2011)

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Pragmatic language development'

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