LOT Winterschool 2014

LOT Winterschool 2014: Language Acquisition

Acquisition of pragmatics

We often communicate more than the literal content of the words and sentences we use. In this course I will review research on how children acquire pragmatic competence, the ability to signal and infer meaning beyond what has been explicitly said. In fact, we will even see that children use some kind of pragmatic competence in order to communicate before they even speak their first words as well as in order to learn their first words (lecture 1). In lectures 2 and 3 I will discuss how pragmatic competence develops once children have mastered their first words, especially as regards reference and implicature. In lectures 4 and 5 I will draw on research in developmental disorders (mainly autism and specific language impairment) and in bilingualism to reveal components of non-linguistic cognition that pragmatic competence interacts with (such as theory of mind and executive functions). I will make links with competing theories of pragmatics and discuss how experimental evidence from acquisition can be used to (dis)confirm their predictions.

Day-to-day program

Monday

What is pragmatics? Definitions, phenomena, interfaces

Preverbal pragmatics and the pragmatics of word learning

Tuesday

The acquisition of Gricean maxims: reference, implicature, metaphor

Wednesday

The acquisition of Gricean maxims: reference, implicature, metaphor

– continued

Thursday

Pragmatics and the interface with non-linguistic cognition: evidence from developmental disorders

Friday

Pragmatics and the interface with non-linguistic cognition: evidence from bilingualism

Overview and outlook.

Reading materials

Course readings (all readings listed are recommended for the corresponding lecture)

Monday

Clark, E.V. (in press). Two pragmatic principles in language use and acquisition. In D. Matthews (Ed.), Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2007). A new look at infant pointing. Child Development, 78, (3), 705–722.

Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (2005). Pragmatics. In F. Jackson & M. Smith (eds) Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy. OUP, Oxford : 468-501. (especially sections 1 and 2 for a brief theory-neutral introduction to pragmatics)

Tuesday and Wednesday

On reference:

Davies, C. & Katsos, N. (2010). Over-informative Children: Production/Comprehension Asymmetry or Tolerance to Pragmatic Violations? Lingua, 120/8: 1956-1972

Nadig, A. & Sedivy, J. (2002). Evidence of perspective-taking constraints in children's on-line reference resolution. Psychological Science, 13 (4), pp. 329-336

On implicature:

Barner, D., Brooks, N., & Bale, A. (2011). Accessing the unsaid: The role of scalar alternatives in children’s pragmatic inference. Cognition, 118, 87-96.

Katsos, N. (in press). The acquisition of scalar implicature. In D. Matthews (Ed.), Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Katsos, N.& Bishop, D. V. M. (2011) Pragmatic Tolerance: Implications for the Acquisition of Informativeness and Implicature. Cognition, 20: 67-81.

Schulze C, Grassmann S, Tomasello M. (2013). 3-Year-Old Children Make Relevance Inferences in Indirect Verbal Communication. Child Development. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12093. [Epub ahead of print]

On metaphor:

Pouscoulous, N. (in press). The acquisition of metaphor. In D. Matthews (Ed.), Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Thursday

Happé, F. G. E. (1993). Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism: A test of relevance theory. Cognition, 48: 101–19

Katsos, N., Andrés Roqueta, C., Estevan, R. A. C., & Cummins, C. (2011). Are children with Specific Language Impairment Competent with the Pragmatics and Logic of Quantification? Cognition, 119: 43-57

Pijnacker, J., Hagoort, P., Buitelaar, J., Teunisse, J.-P. and Geurts, B. (2009). Pragmatic inferences in high-functioning adults with autism and Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39: 607–18

Friday

Antoniou, K., Katsos, N., Grohmann, K., and Kambanaros, M. (2013). Does Multilingualism Confer an Advantage for Pragmatic Abilities? A Case from Cyprus. In BUCLD 37 Online Proceedings Supplement:

http://www.bu.edu/bucld/files/2013/06/antoniou.pdf

Siegal M, Iozzi L, Surian L (2009) Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children. Cognition 110: 115–122.

Siegal, M., Surian, L., Matsuo, A., Geraci, A., Iozzi, L., Okumura, Y., et al. (2010). Bilingualism accentuates conversational understanding. PLoS One, 5, c9004