Language Development in Early Childhood

Abstract

The practice of successful verbal communication requires that the meanings intended by a speaker or writer are expressed through combinations of sounds or marks that can be received and interpreted by a listener or reader with corresponding sense and significance. Most verbally proficient adults talk and act their way through each day with-out being unduly troubled by worries about failures in communication. We recognize that difficulties can arise, even in conversation with those people we know best. We can mishear words. We can fail to grasp the meanings of utterances. We can misinterpret commands as questions. We can construe polite inquiries as threats to privacy. However, we have devices for dealing with these difficulties. We can suspend and interrupt the conversation: we can ask for repetition, reformulation, or clarification, or we can offer these if we notice that our listeners look puzzled. The problems solved, we can proceed with the flow of talk and action that make up our daily lives. Most of us manage to cope to our satisfaction without recourse to detailed and systematic analyses of what language is, how it works and how human beings succeed in using it.

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