A Review of Pragmatic Perspectives on Early Language Development

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Walsh, Irene P.

Affiliations: School of Clinical Speech and Language Studies, Trinity College Dublin

Abstract: This paper attempts to outline early language development from a pragmatic perspective. Such a perspective views the child as acquiring language in a use oriented context, thus rendering the child’s earliest linguistic attempts as being predominantly pragmatic in nature. The paper also attempts to illustrate the valuable contribution that the subject area of pragmatics has to make to our overall understanding of the language acquisition process and early communication development in young children.

Keywords: Pragmatics, Language Acquisition, Communication Development

DOI: 10.3233/ACS-1993-3103

Journal: Journal of Clinical Speech and Language Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 17-35, 1993