Automating the corpus-based study of the acquisition of pragmatic markers
Sandrine Zufferey, Andréi Popescu-Belis · BORIS (University Library Bern) · 2003
Theoretical background for the acquisition of pragmatic competencies • most of the studies are speech act oriented • in speech act terms, the first pragmatic competencies are acquired around age 2 (comprehension of simple acts), then acquisition continues until over 10 (e.g. ‘promise’) • relatively little attention has been paid to the acquisition of pragmatic markers Factors in the acquisition of pragmatic competencies [Bek90] • innate capacities • child’s participation • role of the caregiver Use of pragmatic markers depends on: • age of child • presence of other persons (parents, peers) [KET99] • type of activity (structured or not) • geographical variation (dialect of English) Goals and Data • study of the occurrence of various pragmatic markers. Only the results of ‘well ’ are presented here. • corpus: recordings of one child, from age 2;4 to 5;0. Available via CHILDES [Kuc76]. • data: 210 files containing each 30 minutes of spontaneous speech (interaction between child and parents). Manual count • distinguish pragmatic occurrences of ‘well ’ from other ones • compute frequency of ‘well ’ depending on age • group by 6-month periods (~26 hours of recording)