Aspects of adult-child communication: the problem of question acquisition

Abstract

This note attempts to clarify the early acquisition of the interrogative system, with data from Serbo-Croatian. The subject is approached from an angle that has hitherto not received sufficient treatment: adult-child interaction in direct communication. The process of question acquisition was observed in a first-born pair of dizygotic twins – a girl, Jasmina, and a boy, Danko – between I; I and 3; 0, the observation beginning a month prior to the time when the children first began to produce questions. The material was transcribed during weekly two-hour sessions in the home of the subjects.