Development Of Pragmatic And Discourse Skills In Chinese Speaking Children

For many years, studies of the development of pragmatic and discourse skills in young children have predominantly focused on English and other European languages, as with the field of child language development in general. This volume, originally published in Chinese Language and Discourse 3:1 (2012), brings together a team of researchers from China, the UK, USA, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. It explores the development of pragmatic and discourse skills among Chinese-speaking children by investigating the development of pragmatic features specific to the Chinese language and culture (i.e. the use of null forms and overt forms in self/other reference and time expressions), socio-cultural factors in child-directed speech and comprehension of semiotic resources in children’s early childhood. The studies reported in the volume draw upon data of different kinds including recorded spontaneous speech, corpus, questionnaires and experimental data. The findings not only highlight a number of developmental patterns which may be attributed to the Chinese language(s) and culture, but also contribute to the understanding of some key issues in the development of pragmatic and discourse skills irrespective of linguistic backgrounds.

The new edition of the leading reference work on Clinical Linguistics, fully updated with new research and developments in the field The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics, Second Edition provides a timely and authoritative survey of this interdisciplinary field, exploring the application of linguistic theory and method to the study of speech and language disorders. Containing 42 in-depth chapters by an international panel of established and rising scholars, this classic volume addresses a wide range of pathologies while offering valuable insights into key theory and research, multilingual and cross-linguistics factors, analysis and assessment methods, and more. Now in its second edition, The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics features nine entirely new chapters on clinical corpus linguistics, multimodal analysis, cognition and language, the linguistics of sign languages, clinical phonotactics, typical and nontypical phonological development, clinical phonology and phonological assessment, and two chapters on instrumental analysis of voice and speech production. Revised and expanded chapters incorporate new research in clinical linguistics and place greater emphasis on specific speech disorders, connections to literacy, and multilingualism. This invaluable reference works: Reflects the latest developments in new research and data, as well as changing perspectives about the priorities and future of the field Features new and revised chapters throughout, many with new authors or authorial teams Offers well-rounded coverage of the major areas of the speech sciences in the study of communication disorders Discusses how mainstream theories and descriptions of language are influenced by clinical research Building on the success of the first edition, The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics, Second Edition, is an indispensable resource for researchers and advanced students across all areas of speech-language sciences, including speech disorders, speech pathology, speech therapy, communication disorders, cognitive linguistics, and neurolinguistics.

This is the first book-length study of phonological development and impairment of Chinese-speaking children. It provides the first normative data on this population, which will be of value to speech and language therapists and other professionals. It also advances the notion of 'phonological saliency' which explains the cross-linguistic similarities and differences in children's phonological development.

This book contributes to the literature of interlanguage pragmatics by building an interface between researching and teaching speech acts in the Chinese context. It is written for researchers, language educators, classroom teachers and readers who are interested in interlanguage pragmatics research, acquisition and teaching, with particular reference to speech acts performed by Chinese learners of English, and their relationships with the learners’ first language and cultural concepts. It provides a more advanced understanding of the production and development of speech acts of Chinese learners of English from the cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, L1 and L2 developmental perspectives, drawing on relevant second language acquisition theoretical frameworks. It also recommends research-informed pedagogies that are applicable to other learners of English.

Volume II of the handbook offers a unique collection of exemplary case studies. In five chapters and 99 articles it presents the state of the art on how body movements are used for communication around the world. Topics include the functions of body movements, their contexts of occurrence, their forms and meanings, their integration with speech, and how bodily motion can function as language. By including an interdisciplinary chapter on ‘embodiment’, volume II explores the body and its role in the grounding of language and communication from one of the most widely discussed current theoretical perspectives. Volume II of the handbook thus entails the following chapters: VI. Gestures across cultures, VII. Body movements: functions, contexts and interactions, VIII. Gesture and language, IX. Embodiment: the body and its role for cognition, emotion, and communication, X. Sign Language: Visible body movements as language. Authors include: Mats Andrèn, Richard Asheley, Benjamin Bergen, Ulrike Bohle, Dominique Boutet, Heather Brookes, Penelope Brown, Kensy Cooperrider, Onno Crasborn, Seana Coulson, James Essegby, Maria Graziano, Marianne Gullberg, Simon Harrison, Hermann Kappelhoff, Mardi Kidwell, Irene Kimbara, Stefan Kopp, Grigoriy Kreidlin, Dan Loehr, Irene Mittelberg, Aliyah Morgenstern, Rafael Nuñez, Isabella Poggi, David Quinto-Pozos, Monica Rector, Pio Enrico Ricci-Bitti, Göran Sonesson, Timo Sowa, Gale Stam, Eve Sweetser, Mark Tutton, Ipke Wachsmuth, Linda Waugh, Sherman Wilcox.

This collection of scholarly articles is the first to address the challenges of multilingualism from a multidisciplinary perspective. The contributors to this volume examine both the beneficial and the problematic aspects of multilingualism in various dimensions, that is, they address familial, educational, academic, artistic, scientific, historical, professional, and geopolitical challenges.

Compared with other subdisciplines in Chinese linguistics, children’s language acquisition is a significant field with relatively limited achievements. Based on data from a dynamic and developmental corpus, this book is a comprehensive exploration of the early development of Chinese-speaking children’s language acquisition. Anchoring the discussions regarding phonetics, semantics and aspects of syntax in a cognitive and functional framework, the author conducts an in-depth analysis of many acquisition characteristics, such as the inevitable and incidental errors of their learning of initials; their ability to obtain the concept of time at a young age and the utilization of Le in the expression of the past tense; their understanding of subjectivity at a young age and the ability to express it; their learning of the degree of modality following the order of from probability to necessity; and children’s acquisition of syntactic structures being impacted by genetics and also affected by the steps involved in syntactic processing. Although genetics, cognition and experience all play a role in children’s language acquisition, this book focuses on the role of cognitive functions. By successfully explaining the acquisition rules based on some cutting-edge linguistic theories, the book will certainly be beneficial to scholars studying linguistics, psychology, cognitive science and early childhood educators.

This book reports the current aspects of children from multilingual families in Taiwan and describes these children's perceptions towards their linguistic, academic, and social development from a survey study and a discourse analysis study. The discourse analysis study focuses on the narrative developments of children born to Southeast Asian mothers versus average Taiwanese children across four grade levels in the elementary school. This book is significant in four aspects: describing the children with multilingual family background qualitatively and quantitatively, including a wide range and a large number of participants, proposing new analytical approaches for child narrative research, and compiling applicable classroom activities based on of research findings. The cultural and linguistic background of the children described in this book may be of interest to researchers and educators not only in Chinese-speaking regions, but also in areas where the phenomenon of multilingual family is becoming common in the society.