Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Children's use of the connective and during narration was studied. Semantic analyses of the relationships between connected sentences showed that and is heavily used for a range of meanings, including those for which more specific connectives (such as causal or temporal ones) would be more appropriate. Few differences were found bet ween juxtaposed narrative sentences that had no connective and those that were joined by and. It was concluded that semantic relationship is not an adequate explanation for why and is used. Rather, pragmatic functions seem to be important: and is more commonly used when the child is producing thematically related speech (i.e., within versus between narratives) and is associated with longer conversational turns. And seems to function as a generalized signal of cohesion between sentences and an indication that the narrator's conversational turn is not over.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bloom, L. , Lahey, M. , Hood, L. , Lifter, K. & Fiess, K. (1980) Complex sentences: acquisition of syntactic connectives and the semantic relations they encode Journal of Child Language , 7,235-261.

Clancy, P. , Jacobsen, T. & Silva, M. (1976) The acquisition of conjunction: a cross-linguistic study. Papers & Reports on Child Language Development , 12, 71-80.

Deese, J. (1984). Thought into Speech The Psychology of a Language (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall ).

Eisenberg, A. (1980). A syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analysis of conjunction. Papers & Reports on Child Language Development , 19, 70-78.

Gallagher, T. & Craig, H. (1987). An investigation of pragmatic connectives within preschool peer interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 27-37

Halliday, M. , & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English (New York : Longman)

Hood, L. , Lahey, M. , Lifter, K. & Bloom, L. (1978). Observational, descriptive methodology in studying child language: Preliminary results on the development of complex sentences . In G. P Sackett (ed.), Observing behaviour, Vol I Theory and Application in Mental Retardation (Baltimore University Park Press), 239-263.

Jisa, H. (1984/85). French preschoolers' use of et pis ('and then') First Language, 5, 169-184.

Labov, W. , & Waletzky, F. (1967). Narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm (ed.), Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts. (Seattle: University of Washington Press).

10.

Longacre, R. (1983) Vertical threads of cohesion in discourse. In F. Neubauer (ed ), Coherence m Natural-language Texts. (Philadelphia. John Benjamin)

11.

McNeill, D. (1987) Psycholinguistics. A New Approach ( New York Harper & Row).

12.

Peterson, C. & McCabe, A. (1987). The connective 'and': do older children use it less as they learn other connectives? Journal of Child Language , 14, 375-381

13.

_____ ( 1983) Developmental Psycholinguistics. Three Ways of Looking at a Child's Narrative (New York: Plenum)

14.

Scott, C. (1984). Adverbial connectivity in conversations of children 6-12. Journal of Child Language, 11, 423-452.

15.

van Dijk, T.A. (1979). Pragmatic connectives. Journal of Pragmatics, 3, 447-456.

16.

_____ ( 1981). Studies in the Pragmatics of Discourse ( New York: Mouton).

The connective AND as discourse glue

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References