Pragmatics can
be defined as the intentional use of language to interact with other people.
Although this definition emphasizes language, the use of language for social
ends involves much more, including the coordination of linguistic information
with gestures, facial expression, eye gaze, and body posture; the use of
information from the physical, social, and affective context of the talk to
decide what to say, how to say it, and what another person's words mean; and
the integration of the current talk with relevant information from past
encounters with the other participants or from previous events and entities
referred to in the current talk. Moreover, typical children engage in
considerable intentional communication prior to language, relying on nonverbal
behavior and situational support. Consequently, becoming pragmatically
competent requires skills and knowledge beyond those entailed in the
acquisition of the linguistic system, including memory skills, deep and
well-organized knowledge about the social and physical worlds and about the
communicative process itself, the ability to flexibly integrate multiple
sources of information from different modalities, and the ability to plan and
recognize goal-directed sequences of actions.
EARLY SPEECH ACTS IN CHILD LANGUAGE
The early development of the communicative functions ―speech acts― of child’s language occurs simultaneously with the development of the linguistic aspects of child language. Yasin (1991: 218) states that the early communicative functions of child language or speech acts ―i.e. illocutionary acts― are determined by three kinds of intonation: “terminal”, “interrogative”, and “continuous” intonation. In addition, Clark and Clark (1977: 312) children’s speech acts are determined by the gesture accompanying their utterances. Two groups of gestures are “pointing”, and “reaching”. These two groups of gestures are considered as the precursors to speech acts of “asserting” and “requesting”.
1. Assertions
To communicate with their parents and other adults, at the single-word utterances, children begin to produce single words accompanying with certain gestures such as “bye-bye + (hand waves)” or “boo + (peeping from behind hand)”. These early gestures and word combinations tend to be part of a routine that adults insist on in a certain context. The first assertions in the child language development usually consist of a general “deictic” or “pointing” words (like “there” or “that”) combined with a gesture such as: “Da + (point)” (in single-word utterances) and “see boy + (point)” (in two-word utterances).2. Requests
Request
is one of speech acts that most frequently occur in various social
interactions. A request is made when an addressor asks the addressee to “do”
something (Vintoni: 2009). It is a directive speech act which counts as an
attempt to get the addressee to do an act that the addressor wants the
addressee to do, in which the addressor believes that the addressee is able to
do, and which it is not obvious that the addressee will do in the normal course
of events or of the addressee’s own accord.
fianou
(1992) in Fukushima (1996) states that request can be categorized into two: requests
for action and request for information. He notes that request for
action involves a higher degree of imposition than requests for information. He
states that requests for an action
refer to naming the object that the child wants to be given, and requests for information tend to be in
form of questions. In making request (when they want the candy) children might
say “give candy + (pointing)”. In addition, children might ask questions
demanding a simple “yes” or “no” answer by using “rising” intonation such “Sit
water?”. Another requests for information might be in forms of “Where”
questions such as “Where doggie go?”, “Where mama?”, “Where ball?”. Besides,
children also tend to make some negative requests such as “No more” (don’t do
that anymore).
Accordingly,
in relation to the development of child language, Clark and Clark (1977:
314-315) list some examples of both speech acts (“asserting” and “requesting”)
produced by the children in both in the single-word and two-word utterances
stages of child language development. They are as follow:
Assertion:
Ba + (look)
(Looking at the ball)
Dada + (look)
(Looking at father)
See boy. See sock. That car.
(Presence of object)
Allgone shoe. No wet. Byebye hot.
(Denial of presence)
Bill here. There doggie.
(Location of object)
My milk. Kendall chair. Mama dress.
(Possession of object)
Pretty boat. Big bus.
(Quality of object)
Mommy sleep. Hit ball. Block fall.
(Ongoing event)
Request:
Mama + (whine) + (reach)
(Reaches towards any object
desired)
Ma + (whine) + (point)
( Pointing at microphone)
More taxi. Want gum. Where ball?
(Request for action)
Where doggies go? Sit water?
(Request for information)
Early from the age of around six months,
children were able to communicate with their parents and other adults; they are able to “assert” or
“request” their interlocutors, although in forms of incomplete syntactic
structure of sentences. They perform speech acts with the combination of their
utterances and certain gestures and intonations. The communicative functions of
language ―i.e. speech acts― produced by children develop simultaneously together
with the development child linguistic competence. They developed together with
the development of linguistic aspects (phonemes or sounds, morpheme, words, and
sentences) of language, through a process involving some stages.
