Topic Continuation in CHildren's Conversation

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A purpose of this project is to study in natural settings how preschool children keep topic continuation in social-interactive conversational situations. Topic continuation along other pragmatic skills is learned in social-interactive conversation situations. Results show as follows in the report of Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(C)(2).1.The development of pragmatic negation in preschooler's conversation.Two aspects were studied (1) development of pragmatic functions across languages. and (2) the relationships between forms and functions. This development pattern seems to parallel the general cognitive development of children. All the forms listed in Table 5 met; the criteria for emergence defined above.Two types of mechanism, with two different temporal relationships between the development of function and the acquisition of form, are suggested by the data.2.Topic continuation in social-interactive situations.This research indicates that children under 2:6 make minimal contributions to topic continuation, and gradually they begin to change the expected propositional content. However, topic performance appears to be dependent on communicative partner. place of conversation, physical materials, and shows how children gain these understandings.3.Gesture and laugh facilitate children's topic continuation in children's conversation.The data mentioned so far confirmed the existence of the close relationship between verbal activity and the speaker's motor activity Gesture as motor activity conveys meaning by mimetically and idiosyncratically through continuously varying forms.Finding should contribute to our understanding for the development of children's pragmatic knowledge about conversation. Findings should also provide knowledge to teachers and parents about; preschoolers' knowledge about conversation. This type of information should help design more appropriate intervention techniques to the school children.