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Summary of School-Age Children's Pragmatic and Semantic Development

By R.E. Owens, Jr.
Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Updated on Jul 20, 2010

The area of most dramatic linguistic growth during the school-age and adult years is language use, or pragmatics. It is in pragmatics that we see the interaction of language and socialization (Stephens, 1988). In addition, a child gradually acquires an abstract knowledge of meaning that is independent of particular contexts or individual interpretations. In the process, she or he reorganizes the semantic aspects of language. The new organization is reflected in the way the child uses words.

Age in Years Pragmatic Semantic
5
  • Uses mostly direct requests
  • Repeats for repair
  • Begins to use gender topics
  
6
  • Repeats with elaboration for repair
  • Uses adverbial conjuncts now, then, so, though; disjuncts rare
  
7
  • Uses and understands most deictic terms
  • Narrative plots have beginning, end, problem, and resolution
  • Uses left/right, back/front
  • Shifts from single-word to multiword definitions
8
  • Sustains concrete topics
  • Recognizes nonliteral meanings in indirect requests
  • Begins considering others' intentions
  
9
  • Sustains topics through several turns
  • Addresses perceived source of breakdown in repair
  • Produces all elements of story grammar
  • Has generally completed most of syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift
  • Begins to interpret psychological states described with physical terms (cold, blue) but misinterprets
10  
  • Comprehends in and on used for temporal relations
  • comprehends most familial terms
11
  • Sustains abstract topics
  • 20% of narrative sentences still begin with and
  • Creates abstract definitions
  • Has all elements of conventional adult definitions
  • Understands psychological states described with physical terms
12
  • Uses adverbial conjuncts (4/100 utterances) otherwise, anyway, therefore, and however, disjuncts really and probably
  

Excerpted From:

Language Development: An Introduction
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Excerpt from Language Development: An Introduction, by J.E. Owens, Jr., 2008 edition, p. 315.

© ______ 2008, Allyn & Bacon, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission.  All rights reserved. The reproduction, duplication, or distribution of this material by any means including but not limited to email and blogs is strictly prohibited without the explicit permission of the publisher.

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