Child's Talk: Learning to Use Language

THIS VOLUME was originally intended to be a collection of selected papers, written in the decade after 1972. The original plan was to rework and to rewrite them individuatly, to create a book of essays. In the process those earlier papers were absorbed into a more general framework, though traces of them can still be found. They became a single book. Its themes are how the young child acquires the wes of his native language and how by using language first for limited ends the child comes finally to recognize its more powerful, productive uses. Its emphasis is on pragmatks-on learning "how to do things with words," in Austin's happy phrase, particularly how to achieve joint attention and conduct joint action with another by the use of language.