Cover not available
Part of
Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Danielle Matthews
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10] 2014
► pp. 105–120

Two Pragmatic Principles in Language Use and Acquisition

Speakers, adults and children, rely on two pragmatic principles in language use: conventionality in the meanings of the words chosen to convey their intentions, and contrast among these meanings. Early recognition of these two principles allows children to add readily to their lexical repertoire on the assumption from contrast that any difference in form marks some difference in meaning. Evidence for the role of these principles in acquisition comes from early word uses, adherence to the word(s) learnt for a category, repairs to lexical choices, the construction of lexical domains, and patterns of acquisition in the uptake of unfamiliar words.
Published online: 26 June 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.10.07cla
References (81)
Andersen, E.S. (1975). Cups and glasses: Learning that boundaries are vague. Journal of Child Language , 2, 79–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aviezer, O. (2003). Bedtime talk of three-year-olds: Collaborative repair of miscommunication. First Language , 23, 117–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barrett, M.D. (1978). Lexical development and over-extension in child language. Journal of Child Language , 5, 205–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beckage, N., Smith, L., & Hills, T. (2011). Small worlds and semantic network growth in typical and late talkers. PLoS , 6, e19348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benson, N.J., & Anglin, J.M. (1987). The child’s knowledge of English kin terms. First Language , 7, 41–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Birch, S.A.J., Vauthier, S.A., & Bloom, P. (2008). Three- and four-year-olds spontaneously use others’ past performance to guide their learning. Cognition , 107, 1018–1034. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blake, J., & Dolgoy, S.J. (1993). Gestural development and its relation to cognition during the transition to language. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior , 177, 87–102. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, D.L. (1977). Meaning and Form . London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (2005). Why can’t you ‘open’ a nut or ‘break’ a cooked noodle? Learning covert object categories in action word meanings. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe & D.H. Rakison (Eds.), Building Object Categories in Developmental Time (pp. 209–243). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M., & Choi, S. (2003). Space under construction: Language-specific spatial categorization in first language acquisition. In D. Gentner & S. Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Cognition (pp. 387–428). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bréal, M. (1897). Essai de Sémantique . Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Brown, R.W. (1958). Words and Things . New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Bushnell, E.W., & Aslin, R.N. (1977). Inappropriate expansion: A demonstration of a methodology for child language research. Journal of Child Language , 4, 115–122. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Byers-Heinlein, K., & Werker, J.F. (2009). Monolingual, bilingual, trilingual: Infants’ language experience influences the development of a word-learning heuristic. Developmental Science , 12, 815–823. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carey, S. (1985). Conceptual Change in Childhood . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chapman, K.L., Leonard, L.B., & Mervis, C.B. (1986). The effect of feedback on young children’s inappropriate word usage. Journal of Child Language , 13, 101–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Choi, S., & Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition , 41, 83–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chouinard, M.M., & Clark, E.V. (2003). Adult reformulations of child errors as negative evidence. Journal of Child Language , 30, 637–669. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V. (1972). On the child’s acquisition of antonyms in two semantic fields. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior , 10, 266–275. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1973a). What’s in a word? On the child’s acquisition of semantics in his first language. In T.E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language (pp. ­65–110). New York, NY: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1973b). Non-linguistic strategies and the acquisition of word meanings. Cognition , 2, 161–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1980). ‘Here’s the top’: Nonlinguistic strategies in the acquisition orientational terms. Child Development , 51, 329–338.Google Scholar
. (1982). Language change during language acquisition. In M.E. Lamb & A.L. Brown (Eds.), Advances in Developmental Psychology (Vol.2, pp. 171–195). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).Google Scholar
. (1987). The principle of contrast: A constraint on language acquisition. In B. ­MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of Language Acquisition (pp. 1–33). Hillsdale, NJ: ­Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
. (1988). On the logic of contrast. Journal of Child Language , 15, 317–335. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1990). On the pragmatics of contrast. Journal of Child Language , 17, 417–431. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1993). The Lexicon in Acquisition . Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2007a). Conventionality and contrast in language acquisition. In M. Sabbagh & C. Kalish (Eds.), Conventionality in Cognitive Development: How Children Acquire Shared Representations in Language, Thought, and Action (pp. 11–23). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
. (2007b). Young children’s uptake of new words in conversation. Language in Society 36, 157–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (2010). Adult offer, word-class, and child uptake in early lexical acquisition. First Language , 30, 250–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V., & Clark, H.H. (1979). When nouns surface as verbs. Language , 55, 767–811. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V., & Estigarribia, B. (2011). Using speech and gesture to inform young children about unfamiliar word meanings. Gesture , 11, 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V., & Grossman, J.B. (1998). Pragmatic directions and children’s word learning. Journal of Child Language , 25, 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.V., & Wong, A.D.-W. (2002). Pragmatic directions about language use: Offers of words and relations. Language in Society , 31, 181–212.Google Scholar
Corrin, J. (2010). Maternal repair initiation at MLU Stage 1: The developmental power of ‘hm?’ First Language , 30, 312–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corsaro, W.A. (1977). The clarification request as a feature of adult interactive style with young children. Language in Society , 6, 183–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dodd, B. (1975). Children’s understanding of their own phonological forms. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 27, 165–172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dougherty, J.W.D. (1979). Learning names for plants and plants for names. American Anthropologist , 21, 298–315.Google Scholar
Farrar, M.J. (1992). Negative evidence and grammatical morpheme acquisition. Developmental Psychology , 28, 90–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferrier, L.J. (1978). Some observations of error in context. In N. Waterson & C. Snow (Eds.), The Development of Communication (pp. 301–309). New York, NY: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Forrester, M.A., & Cherington, S.M. (2009). The development of other-related conversational skills: A case study of conversational repair during the early years. First Language , 29, 166–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frank, M.C., Goodman, N.D., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2009). Using speakers’ referential intentions to model early cross-situational word learning. Psychological Science , 20, 578–585. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, T.M. (1977). Revision behaviors in the speech of normal children developing language. Journal of Speech & Hearing Research , 20, 303–318.Google Scholar
Garvey, C. (1979). Contingent queries and their relations in discourse. In E. Ochs & B.B. ­Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmental Pragmatics (pp. 363–372). New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D.1975. Evidence for the psychological reality of semantic components: The verbs of possession. In D.A. Norman, D.E. Rumelhartthe LNR Research Group, & (Eds.), Explorations in Cognition (pp. 211–246). San Franscisco, CA: Freeman.Google Scholar
Gergely, G., Bekkering, H., & Király, I. (2002). Rational imitation in preverbal infants. Nature , 415, 755. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gogate, L.J., & Hollich, G. (2010). Invariance detection within an interactive system: A perceptual gateway to language development. Psychological Review , 117, 496–516. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graham, S.A., Nayer, S.L., & Gelman, S.A. (2011). Two-year-olds use the generic/nongeneric distinction to guide their inferences about novel kinds. Child Development , 82, 493–507. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haviland, S.E., & Clark, E.V. (1974). ‘This man’s father is my father’s son’: A study of the acquisition of English kin terms. Journal of Child Language , 1, 23–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hills, T.T., Maouene, M., Maouene, J., Sheya, A., & Smith, L. (2009). Categorical structure among shared feature networks of early-learned nouns. Cognition , 112, 381–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hirschfeld, L.A. (1989). Rethinking the acquisition of kinship terms. International Journal of Behavioral Development , 12, 541–568. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Houston-Price, C., Caloghiris, Z., & Raviglione, E. (2010). Language experience shapes the development of the mutual exclusivity bias. Infancy , 15, 125–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, S., & Murphy, M.L. (2005). Using corpora to investigate antonym acquisition. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics , 10, 401–422. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Käsermann, M.-L., & Foppa, K. (1981). Some determinants of self-correction: An interactional study of Swiss German. In W. Deutsch (Ed.), The Child’s Construction of Language (pp. ­77–104). London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, B.F. (2011). A new look at redundancy in children’s gesture and word combinations. In I. Arnon & E.V. Clark (Eds.), Experience, Variation, and Generalization: Learning a First Language (pp. 75–89). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kemp, C., Tenenbaum, J.B., Griffiths, T.L., Yamada, T., & Ueda, N. (2006). Learning systems of concepts with an infinite relational model. Paper presented at the28th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
Koenig, M.A., & Echols, C.H. (2003). Infants’ understanding of false labeling events: The referential roles of words and the speakers who use them. Cognition , 87, 179–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koenig, M.A., & Harris, P.L. (2005). Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers. Child Development , 76, 1261–1277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kurumada, C. (2013). Contextual inferences over speakers’ pragmatic intentions: Preschoolers’ comprehension of prosody. Paper presented at the35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Berlin, Germany.
Lewis, D.K. (1969). Convention: A Philosophical Study . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Majid, A., Boster, J.S., & Bowerman, M. (2008). The cross-linguistic categorization of everyday events: A study of cutting and breaking. Cognition, 109, 235–256. DOI logo
Moore, C., & Dunham, P.J. (Eds.). (1995). Joint Attention: Its Origins and Role in Development . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Murphy, M.L., & Jones, S. (2008). Antonyms in children’s and child-directed speech. First Language 28, 403–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Namy, L.L. (2012). Getting specific: Early general mechanisms give rise to domain-­specific expertise in word learning. Language Learning & Development , 8, 47–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paul, H.1880. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte . Halle: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Rheingold, H.L., Hay, D.F., & West, M.J. (1976). Sharing in the second year of life. Child Development , 47, 1148–1158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rescorla, L. (1980). Overextensions in early language development. Journal of Child Language , 7, 321–335. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roy, B.C., Frank, M.C., & Roy, D. (2009). Exploring word learning in a high-density longitudinal corpus. Paper presented at the31st annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Saji, N., Imai, M., Saalback, H., Zhang, Y., Shu, H., & Okada, H. (2011). Word learning does not end at fast-mapping: Evolution of verb meanings through reorganization of an entire semantic domain. Cognition , 118, 45–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saxton, M., Houston-Price, C., & Dawson, N. (2005). The prompt hypothesis: Clarification requests as corrective input for grammatical errors. Applied Psycholinguistics , 26, 393–414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saxton, M., Kulcsar, B., Marshall, G., & Rupra, M. (1998). Longer-term effects of corrective input: An experimental approach. Journal of Child Language , 25, 701–721. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scofield, J., & Behrend, D.A. (2008). Learning words from reliable and unreliable speakers. Cognitive Development , 23, 278–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scollon, R. (1976). Conversations with a One-year-old . Honolulu, HA: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Sobel, D.M., & Corriveau, K.H. (2010). Children monitor individuals’ expertise for word learning. Child Development , 81, 669–679. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., & Barton, M.E. (1994). Learning words in nonostensive contexts. Developmental Psychology , 30, 639–650. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). The roots of human altruism. British Journal of Psychology , 100, 445–471. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wootton, A.J.1997. Interaction and the Development of Mind . Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wyman, E., & Rakoczy, H. (2011). Social conventions, institutions, and human uniqueness. In W. Welsch, W. Singer, & A. Wunder (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Anthropology: Continuing Evolution of Man (pp. 131–156). New York, NY: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yu, C., Ballard, D.H., & Aslin, R.N. (2005). The role of embodied intention in early lexical acquisition. Cognitive Science , 29, 961–1005. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zammit, M., & Schafer, G. (2010), Maternal label and gesture use affects acquisition of specific object names. Journal of Child Language , 38, 201–221. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zukow-Goldring, P. (1996). Sensitive caregiving fosters the comprehension of speech: When gestures speak louder than words. Early Development & Parenting , 5, 195–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Sudartinah, Titik
2023. A Conversation Analysis of Two-year-old Children’s Speech in Child-Adult Interactions. Jurnal Obsesi : Jurnal Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini 7:3 ► pp. 3345 ff. DOI logo
Hess Zimmermann, Karina
2019. Pensar sobre la Morfología de las Palabras: un Proyecto Didáctico para el Desarrollo de Vocabulario en la Escuela Secundaria. Revista Iberoamericana de Evaluación Educativa 12:2 ► pp. 193 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 19 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.