The purpose of this study was to analyse the emergence and development of the ability to relate message form to the production context during the transition between the prelinguistic period and the linguistic period. The study focuses on utterances used to express a request, directly or indirectly. Two groups of 20 children aged 1;7 and 2;5 were observed in a play situation with the experimenter who produced four types of requests: imperative, embedded imperative, expression of a desire and question directive. Each type of utterance was produced twice, once referring to an object that was relevant to the current activity and once referring to an object that was irrelevant. The main results showed that (1) the context of the utterance had an influence on the children's responses by the middle of the second year, and (2) children aged two-and-a-half are able to relate the context of an utterance to its form.Interpersonal communication can take place only if each participant can understand the other person's social intentions by relating the message content and/or form to the production context. The purpose of the present study was to analyse the emergence and initial development of the ability to establish this relationship. In other words, we shall look at the development of speech comprehension from a pragmatic standpoint. The study focuses on utterances used to express a request directly or indirectly.
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