ABSTRACT
This thesis titled “A Pragmatic Interpretation of Child Language: A Case Study of
Telegraphic Speech has been carried out to determine the role of
context in understanding language use by children or children‟s speech.
Pragmatics is the study of speaker context meaning…. It is a component
of linguistic study that goes beyond grammatical competence or well
formed sentence to find meaning for a particular utterance or discourse
exchange. It demonstrates the relationship between what speakers say and
what they actually mean and the kind of effects they expect on the
minds of the hearers. The motivation for the study emanates from the
fact that children‟s utterances are not easily understood, especially
when one is not familiar with the child‟s background and speech
mannerisms. To a large extent, one needs to rely on context to
effectively comprehend what a child says. The study sought to establish
whether or not situations and circumstance of speech could be brought to
bear in order to discern meaning in children‟s utterances: whether
contextual meaning would be needed to complement semantics. The three
media recording technique was employed to elicit utterances from Punpun,
the case study child. The utterances were later interpreted
pragmatically through the Systemic Functional Grammar‟s primary level of
linguistic analysis: grammar and situation. Interpretations were also
made using the various approaches through which pragmatic study is
undertaken. The result of the interpretation shows that to a very great
extent, context is indispensable, one cannot rely on grammar or literal
meaning alone, one has also to make use of inferences, ask questions
from those that understand the child better, take a thought, follow the
context – both linguistic and non linguistics. All these point to the
fact that an understanding of the child‟s general language situation
aids in understanding his speech. The implication of this is that
attention should be paid to what a child says, no one uses language
without reason. Close attention should be paid to children and what they
say, they don‟t speak in vacuum. Even if their speech is not matured as
that of adult, yet, it is meaningful and they intend to do one thing or
the other through whatever they say: Language is a tool for
communication and a child utilizes this tool for various reasons. A
child, at any time utilizes his linguistic knowledge to effectively pass
across to his hearer, his intentions or desire while expecting the
cooperation of the hearer who may need to rely on some background
information to attend to him. This study also confirms the fact that
children‟s utterances can be subjected to various pragmatic theories
such as deixis, conversational analysis, cooperative principles, and so
on.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0 Background to the Study
Language is a peculiar gift of nature to man. It is a central and complex
phenomenon to all human beings. It stands at the centre of all
human endeavours from the onset of human civilization. Language is the
means of acquisition of all manner of knowledge and the tool by which
morals, ethics and beliefs that govern human lives are passed on to the
succeeding generations. It is the medium of thought and expression of
human wants, desires, emotions, ideas, both positive and negative. Clark
and Clark (1977) see language as a basic ingredient in virtually every
social situation.
However, no one is born an adult with full possession of this
vehicle of thought and expression. Rather, a man is born an infant who
passes through various stages of growth, which significantly impact on
his use of language. A child does not also begin to speak automatically
when the time comes for him to; he undergoes some stages before and
after the onset of meaningful utterances with which he communicates with
his environment. As a result of the inevitability of language in human
life, parents look forward with great expectation to seeing their
children utter the first words.
As a special area of human life, psycholinguistics is the field of
language studies that handles the issue of language acquisition. As
Berry (1975) puts it, psycholinguistics is the discipline that discusses
both psychological and linguistic issues in relation to each other. A
central question in psycholinguistics is the issue of child language
acquisition which could be perceived as the process by which a human..