Studies towards a description of the development and functioning of children's awareness of linguistic variability

Abstract

Children's language acquisition does not consist solely of the mastery,, of linguistic form and structure, children must also acquire the rules for appropriate use of that form and structure. To become competent speaker-hearers children must learn how to handle linguistic variability. Almost nothing is knoýnabout how children acquire the' sociolinguistic skills'and patterns of sociolinguistic variability which have been reported for adult speakers. This thesis therefore investigates some aspects of'the structure and functioning of linguistic variability in children's speech. It is shown that non-segmental variability-in children's speech constitutes an area of primý, importance for study. Children systematically employ the resources of non-segmental variability for a variety of social and affective purposes. The structured nature of this non-segmental variability is revealed by a quantitative analysis of the prosodic and-paralinguistic features in children's speech.