Asking children to ask; an experimental investigation of the pragmatics of relayed questions

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Tanz
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Indirect Requests ◽  
Pragmatic Factor

ABSTRACTChildren's apparent ‘errors’ in interpreting ask as tell, incidentally uncovered in C. Chomsky's research on syntactic development, and subsequently interpreted in terms of E. Clark's theory of semantic development, are re-interpreted in the framework of pragmatic development. An experiment is reported in which a single coherent discourse framework is imposed and one pragmatic factor is manipulated: children's knowledge of the answers to the questions they are supposed to relay. The results confirm the hypothesis that if the children do not know the information, they relay the question, i.e. ask. If they do know the answer, they supply it, i.e. tell. By literally asking, the children in the ‘don't know’ condition demonstrate that they are capable of decoding ask constructions semantically and syntactically. The tendency of the children in the ‘know’ condition to tell is then interpreted as revealing not semantic confusion but pragmatic skill. The children's responses are discussed in relation to three-person speech acts and indirect requests for information. Children's ability to interpret utterances non-literally has implications for conducting experiments with literal instructions and these are also discussed.

Maternal affective input in mother–child interaction

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuo Jing-Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Child Interaction ◽  
Mother Child Interaction ◽  
Parenting Approaches

Contrastive analysis of Chinese and American maternal affective speech acts revealed significant differences in the quantity of child-directed positive and negative speech acts. There were also important qualitative differences in specific types of maternal affective input. Results are consistent with available knowledge of cross-cultural differences in parenting approaches, and have implications for cross-cultural emotion and pragmatic development. Differential cultural values were addressed to account for the observed linguistic behaviors.

EFFECTS OF PROFICIENCY SUBSKILLS ON PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT IN L2 CHINESE STUDY ABROAD

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 469-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Xiao ◽  
Naoko Taguchi ◽  
Shuai Li
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Proficiency Test ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Latent Growth ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Chinese Study ◽  
Curve Modeling ◽  
Data Points ◽  
Listening And Speaking

AbstractThis study is the first to examine contributions of proficiency subskills to pragmatic development. We used the latent growth curve modeling to reveal the causal relationships between proficiency subskills and pragmatic competence in 109 American learners of Chinese across two data points over three months abroad in China. Proficiency was measured by a standardized Chinese proficiency test with separate scores for listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Pragmatic competence was measured by a computerized oral discourse completion task assessing speech acts. Findings showed that pragmatic competence accrued along with increased proficiency. Changes of proficiency explained 54.1% of the variance in changes of pragmatic competence. Listening and speaking contributed more to pragmatic development than reading and writing did, indicating that when pragmatic competence is measured by an online spoken task, speaking and listening have stronger impacts.

From ‘quickly’ to ‘fairly’: on the history ofrather

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTI RISSANEN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Type I ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Syntactic Development

In this article I describe the semantic and syntactic development of the moderatorratherfrom Old to Present-day English using a variationist approach.Ratheroriginates in an Old English comparative adverb indicating speed, and hence time, but the loss of the indication of speed and movement can already be traced in the Old English period. In Middle English the ‘preferential’ senses ofrather(e.g. the type ‘I would rather do X than Y’) become more common than the temporal senses. This contrastive meaning constitutes the unmarked use ofratherin Early Modern English, but it gradually weakens in the course of the Modern English period. The moderator use becomes popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. The semantic development outlined above goes hand in hand with a syntactic development from an original adjunct into a subjunct and conjunct, and finally into a modifier of adjectives and adverbs.

AN EXPLORATORY CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY OF INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
English Language ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
School Students ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Compliment Responses

This paper reports the results of an exploratory cross-sectional study of pragmatic development among three groups of primary school students in Hong Kong who completed a cartoon oral production task (COPT) designed to elicit requests, apologies, and compliment responses. The first two of these speech acts are among the most well represented in the pragmatics literature and are also included in the Hong Kong English language syllabus for primary schools. The latter has also been studied extensively but is not part of the syllabus. Data was collected in Cantonese using the same instrument. Although a number of developmental patterns are revealed—particularly in choice of request strategy, frequency of supportive moves, and use of adjuncts with apologies and compliment responses—there is little evidence of sensitivity to situational variation or pragmatic transfer from Cantonese. This study adds to the small, but growing, body of research on pragmatic development in a second language.

The trends and developments of L2 Japanese research in the 2010s

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-127
Author(s):  
Yoshiko Mori ◽  
Atsushi Hasegawa ◽  
Junko Mori
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Pedagogical Issues ◽  
Learner Motivation ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Based Instruction

AbstractThis article updates the trends and developments of Japanese as a second language (JSL) research since Mori and Mori (2011) by reviewing nearly 200 selected empirical studies published in English or Japanese between 2010 and early 2019. The first section of this review examines the cognitive aspects of second language (L2) Japanese development, focusing on vocabulary and kanji (i.e., Chinese characters transferred into Japanese) learning, syntactic development, and the issues surrounding reading and writing. The second part investigates sociocultural issues in L2 Japanese development and use, including pragmatic development, multilingual/translingual perspectives, and multilingual youth. The third section explores the role of affective variables (primarily learner motivation) in L2 Japanese development. The last section considers various pedagogical issues, including corpus-based studies and the development of materials and resources, instructional designs and classroom studies, technology-enhanced language learning and new instructional models, critical approaches to teaching Japanese and content-based instruction. The review of these themes illuminates trends and emerging areas of interest in post-2010 L2 Japanese research inspired by current developments in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) research, as well as unique features of Japanese language and sociocultural contexts.

Realization Patterns of Request Strategies in Sudanese Arabic and English

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khalid Abdel Gadir Tag Eldin
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
The Social ◽  
Indirect Requests ◽  
Request Strategies ◽  
Colloquial Arabic ◽  
Arabic And English ◽  
The Impact

<p>This study tried to identify the Sudanese university students’ preferences of request strategies. It explored the claim of the universality of the speech act’s three levels of directness i.e. direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect. It contrasted and compared the subjects’ choice of strategies in Arabic and English languages. It also investigated the impact of some social factors on the subjects’ strategy choice. The data collected from the subjects showed that they used direct, conventionally indirect, and non-conventionally indirect requests when they responded to English and Arabic Discourse Completion Tests. This finding consolidated the universality claim of the three levels of directness. The data also showed that the subjects preferred to use direct requests more than the conventionally indirect ones and hints. The collectivist culture of the students’ society influenced their choice of direct strategies as it is based on solidarity, intimacy, etc. The results also showed that the different social variables i.e. the social distance between the interactants, the power one interlocutor has over the other, and the degree of request imposition had impact on the subjects’ choice of strategies. </p><p><strong><em>Keywords</em></strong><strong>:</strong> Pragmatics, Request Strategies, Speech acts, Sudanese university students, Sudanese Colloquial Arabic.</p>

“Mum, Sister Hit Me”: Interlanguage Complaint Strategies of Cantonese Learners of English from Childhood to Their Teens

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Lee
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Cross Cultural Comparison ◽  
Single Strategy ◽  
Similar Range

The act of complaining takes place in home and institutional settings in many forms every day. However, it is an under-represented speech act compared with the wealth of studies on other speech acts such as requesting, apologising, refusing and responding to compliments. The recent studies on complaint making have concentrated on the discussion about the nature of the act, identification of its communicative features and interlanguage or cross-cultural comparison among adult speakers or second language learners at different proficiency levels. Very little is known about the strategy preferences and realisation patterns of the act made by young and teenage second language learners.This study attempts to provide a fuller picture of how a complaint is realised in an oral-production task by learners of English from childhood to their teens. Based on the transcribed spoken discourse of 176 and 156 young and teenage Cantonese learners of English in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools, it was found that their complaints were moderate in terms of directness and severity. There was a significant decreasing use of direct strategies but a growing sociopragmatic awareness and flexibility in the use of a direct single strategy towards less direct combined strategies according to age and level of study. Pragmalinguistically, the learners used a similar range of intensifiers and softeners. The teenage groups are, however, better at increasing or mitigating the force of the act through the use of supportive moves, descriptions and requesting. The study has demonstrated some evidence for the interlanguage pragmatic development of Cantonese learners of English in the act of complaining.

Grammar and pragmatics

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 137-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisela Håkansson ◽  
Catrin Elisabeth Norrby
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
High Level

This paper compares grammatical and pragmatic development in foreign language learners of Swedish. For the analysis of grammatical proficiency, data from translation tasks and essays were tested against the stage model proposed in Processability Theory, which identifies five stages of morpho-syntactic development for Swedish (Pienemann 1998, Pienemann and Håkansson 1999). For the pragmatic analysis a gap-fill task was used, inspired by the discourse completion task (Blum-Kulka 1982, Kasper and Roever 2005), but taking into consideration sequential aspects of the interaction. All tasks were piloted with a control group of Swedish native speakers. The results indicate a relationship between native-like pragmatic command and a high level of morpho-syntactic processability. The findings suggest that students whose grammatical processing capacity is restricted to lower levels find it difficult to contextualise their utterances in a pragmatically appropriate way.

scholarly journals Investigating the effects of pragmatic instruction: a comparison of L2 Spanish compliments and apologies during short term study-abroad

Letrônica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 33989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan DiBartolomeo ◽  
Vanessa Elias ◽  
Daniel Jung
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Study Abroad Programs ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
Short Term Study ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Pragmatic Instruction

Study abroad has been proposed as a crucial aspect to acquire pragmatics in a second language, under the assumption that learners receive more access to authentic input than is available in the classroom. Recent trends indicate a rise in the frequency of short-term study abroad programs (less than 3 months, Allen, 2010), although research has shown that learners may need closer to 9 months to approximate native-like norms without instruction (FÉLIX-BRASDEFER, 2004). This raises the question of how much pragmatic development can be seen in short-term programs, and how to maximize this development. The current study analyzed the development of two expressive speech acts, compliments and apologies, in students who completed a five-week study abroad program in Mérida, Mexico. During the program, learners received instruction on compliments, but not apologies. Speech act data was collected via a 24-item oral discourse completion task administered at both the beginning and end of the program and was further analyzed in SPSS. Results indicate that only some learners developed their production of apologies, while almost all learners showed development in their production of compliments, operationalized by an increased repertoire of strategies available. These results suggest the need for pragmatic instruction during short-term study abroad, and question the utility of native-speaker norms to measure pragmatic development during short-term programs.***Uma pesquisa sobre os efeitos da instrução pragmática: uma comparação de elogios e desculpas em espanhol como segunda língua durante um programa de intercâmbio de curta duração***O intercâmbio estudantil foi proposto como um aspecto crucial para adquirir competência pragmática em um segundo idioma, sob a suposição de que os alunos recebem mais acesso à linguagem autêntica do que é oferecido em sala de aula. As tendências recentes indicam um aumento na frequência de programas de intercâmbio de curto prazo no exterior (menos de três meses, Allen, 2010), contudo outras pesquisas têm mostrado que os alunos podem precisar de mais de nove meses para aproximar-se das normas nativas sem instrução (FÉLIX-BRASDEFER, 2004). Isso levanta a questão de quanto o desenvolvimento pragmático pode ser visto em programas de intercâmbio de curto prazo, e como maximizar esse desenvolvimento. O presente estudo analisou o desenvolvimento de dois atos de fala expressivos, elogios e desculpas, em estudantes que completaram um programa de intercâmbio de cinco semanas em Mérida, México. Durante o programa, os alunos receberam instrução sobre expressões de elogios, mas não sobre pedidos de desculpas. Os dados do ato de fala foram coletados por meio de uma tarefa de conclusão do discurso oral de 24 itens, administrada no início e no final do programa e analisados no SPSS. Os resultados indicam que apenas alguns dos estudantes desenvolveram seus atos de pedir desculpas, enquanto quase todos os alunos mostraram desenvolvimento em sua produção de elogios, operacionalizado como um repertório crescente de estratégias disponíveis. Esses resultados sugerem a necessidade da instrução pragmática durante os programas de intercâmbio estudantil de curto prazo e questionam a utilidade das normas dos falantes nativos para medir o desenvolvimento pragmático durante programas de curto prazo.

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