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Description
Module Content
The module focuses on children's developing pragmatic competence and, within this domain, a selection of topics will be covered.
Teaching Delivery
This module is taught by 1 x 1 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial per week.
Indicative Topics
Indicative lecture topics are based on module content in 2023/24, subject to possible changes.
- The acquisition of various cognitive abilities necessary for full-fledged linguistic communication (e.g., grasp of understanding of common ground).
- The development and understanding of pointing and ostensive gestures.
- The role of pragmatics in language acquisition, and in particular, word learning.
- The early production and understanding of pronouns.
- The early production and understanding of quantifiers.
- The early production and understanding of scalar inferences (and other types of implicatures).
- The early production and understanding of non-literal language (metaphor and irony).
Module Aims and/or Objectives
Module aims: To delineate the theoretical issues raised by children's early acquisition of communicative skills and language; To achieve an appreciation of the development through childhood of a wide range of pre-linguistic and linguistic pragmatic processes (including pointing, non-literal interpretation, metaphor, irony, implicatures); To explain the uses (and misuses) of developmental experimental data for theoretical accounts of pragmatic skills. Module objectives, Intended learning outcomes: Understanding of the concepts and issues outlined in the aims of the module given above; Understanding of the importance of the interaction and interdependence of pragmatic theorizing and experimental research on early communication skills. An ability to provide a pragmatic analysis of some of the experimental results on children's communicative competence.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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