This book provides an integrated view of the acquisition of all the various pragmatic subsystems, including expression of communicative intents, participation in conversation, and production of extended discourse. It is bound to be a valuable text for advanced courses in language acquisition.

Anat Ninio, Catherine E. Snow

Introduction: What Is Pragmatics? -- The Communicative Uses of Speech -- Prelinguistic Communication and the Transition to Speech -- The First Stage of Speech Use -- The Acquisition of a Verbal-Communicative Repertoire -- Participation in Verbal Interaction -- Children as Conversationalists -- The Pragmatics of Connected Discourse