Comprehension of directives in young children: influence of social situation and linguistic form

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyse the emergence and development of the ability to relate message form to the production context during the transition between the prelinguistic period and the linguistic period. The study focuses on utterances used to express a request, directly or indirectly. Two groups of 20 children aged 1;7 and 2;5 were observed in a play situation with the experimenter who produced four types of requests: imperative, embedded imperative, expression of a desire and question directive. Each type of utterance was produced twice, once referring to an object that was relevant to the current activity and once referring to an object that was irrelevant. The main results showed that (1) the context of the utterance had an influence on the children's responses by the middle of the second year, and (2) children aged two-and-a-half are able to relate the context of an utterance to its form.