A First Language: Toddler Talk - Early Intentions/ Illocutionary Functions
Source: Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Topics: Early Years (Birth-5), Speech and Language Development, Language (Ages 2-3)
Six pragmatic categories describe the general purposes of language: control, representation, expressive, social, tutorial, and procedural (Wells, 1985). This table illustrates the relationship of Primitive Speech Acts to later intentions and offers examples of each.
| Broad Pragmatic Categories (Wells, 1985) | Primitive Speech Acts (PSAs) (Dore, 1974) | Early Verbal Intentions (Owens, 1978; Wells, 1985) | Examples |
| Control |
Requesting action Protesting |
|
|
| Representational |
Requesting answer Labeling Answering |
|
|
| Expressive |
|
|
|
| Social |
|
|
|
| Tutorial |
|
|
|
| Procedural |
|
|
|
*This table represents a combination of the work of several researchers and an attempt to remain true to the intended purposes of child speech.
Excerpted From:
Excerpt from Language Development: An Introduction, by R.E. Owens, Jr., 2008 edition, p. 196.
© 2008, Allyn & Bacon, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Take Action
- this article with friends and family.
- Have a question about Early Years (Birth-5)? Ask it here.
- Publish your work on education.com.
