<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This paper is an outline of Grace Wales Shugar’s research approach and some of her main theses in the field of language acquisition and children’s discourse. Her idea of dual agentivity of adult-child interaction shows how to best support children’s communicative skills: It is only when children can show what they know in their own way, and when that child knowledge is received and used in a discourse process, that we can expect a child’s inner motivation to acquire knowledge from others to be maintained and to become a driving force of the child’s further development (Shugar, 1995, p. 233).</abstract>

In Memory of Professor Grace Wales Shugar: Introduction to the Special Issues on “Children’s Language and Communicative Knowledge”

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> Analyses of interactions between an adult and a one-year-old child are often connected with studying early communicative competences, e.g. the child’s participation in turn-taking sequences, in joint attention, and use of pointing gestures. Infants’ communicative behaviors were studied using a structured observational measure - the Early Social Communication Scales (Mundy et al., 2003) in a study of 358 12-month-old children. An exploratory factor analysis revealed: (i) a distinction between the categories of initiation and response among the behaviors displayed, (ii) simple and complex behavior categories occurring; (iii) the presence within one factor of behaviors fulfilling various functions (e.g. requesting and sharing interest). An analysis of the results showed that communicative competences can be classified according to their level and ignoring their function, and made it possible to suggest modifications to the way in which behaviors are coded on the ESCS and to complement the procedure of studying early communicative competences.</abstract>

The Nature of Child-Adult Interaction. From Turn-Taking to Understanding Pointing and Use of Pointing Gestures

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">A model of syntactic development proposes that children’s very first word-combinations are already generated via productive rules that express in syntactic form the relation between a predicate word and its semantic argument. An alternative hypothesis is that they learn frozen chunks. In Study 1 we analyzed a large sample of young children’s early two-word sentences comprising of verbs with direct objects. A majority of objects were generated by pronouns but a third of children’s sentences used bare common nouns as objects. We checked parents’ twoword long sentences of verbs with objects and found almost no bare common nouns. Children cannot have copied sentences with bare noun objects from parents’ two-word long sentences as frozen chunks. In Study 2 we raised the possibility that children’s early sentences with bare nouns are rote-learned ‘telegraphic speech’, acquired as unanalyzed frozen chunks from longer input sentences due to perceptual problem to hear the unstressed determiners. To test this explanation, we tested the children’s speech corpus for evidence that they avoid determiners in their word-combinations. The results showed that they do not; in fact they generate very many determiner-common noun combinations as two-word utterances. The findings suggest that children produce their early word-combinations of the core-grammar type by a productive rule that maps the predicate-argument relations of verbs and their semantic arguments to headdependent syntax, and not as frozen word-combinations. Children mostly learn to use indexical expressions such as pronouns to express the variable semantic arguments of verbs as context dependent; they also employ bare common nouns to express specific values of the arguments. The earliest word-combinations demonstrate that children understand that syntax is built on the predicate-argument relations of words and use this insight to produce their early sentences.</abstract>

Variables and Values in Children’s Early Word-Combinations

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> This paper reviews a body of research that reveals how children acquire the capacity to express the temporal location of episodes that they remember and those they anticipate for the future. The paper shows how the child’s knowledge of language structure provides a window on the conceptual development of memory processes and the capacity for conceptual time travel away from the conversational context of the speech act.</abstract>

Developing Temporal Systems

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">In this short article, we discuss what is specific language impairment (SLI) and why it is a hidden disability that few people have heard about. We describe the impact on research, policy and practice of SLI being a neglected condition. We end by providing the background and rationale of a new internet campaign, RALLI (www.youtube.com/rallicampaign), aimed at changing this state of affairs and raising awareness of SLI.</abstract>

Specific Language Impairment (SLI): The Internet Ralli Campaign to Raise Awareness of SLI

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">This paper discusses the communicative competence of deaf children. It illustrates the process in which such children build narrative texts in interaction with a deaf teacher, and presents the diversity of this process due to the shared vs. non-shared perception of a picture - the source of the topic. Detailed analyses focus on the formal and semantic aspect of the stories, including the length of the text in sign language, the content selected, information categories, and types of answers to the teacher’s questions. This text is our contribution in memory of Professor Grace Wales Shugar, whose idea of dual agentivity of child-adult interaction inspired the research presented here.</abstract>

University of Warsaw University of Warsaw

University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Deaf Children Building Narrative Texts. Effect of Adult-Shared vs. Non-Shared Perception of a Picture Story

<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Universal Grammar serves as a basis for acquiring language competence, but it is not sufficient to acquire communicative competence. To be a competent sender or receiver of an utterance, one needs to be able to infer another person’s intentions or beliefs. In other words, one needs to have a theory of mind. Are then neural substrates of linguistic and communicative abilities distinct, too? The paper characterizes language as a specific human feature and briefly describes both language competence and communicative competence. Finally, it presents the results of an fMRI study according to which communicative and linguistic abilities rely on cerebrally (and computationally) distinct mechanisms.</abstract>

Are Neural Substrates of Language and Communication Distinct?

AHEAD OF PRINT

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Volume 18 (2014): Issue 3 (December 2014) Children's Language and Communicative Knowledge, Part Two. In childhood and beyond, Issue Editor: Barbara Bokus

Volume 18 (2014): Issue 2 (August 2014) Children's Language and Communicative Knowledge, Part One. In Memory of Professor Grace Wales Shugar, Issue Editor: Barbara Bokus

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Psychology of Language and Communication

 eISSN: 2083-8506, pISSN: 1234-2238   Psychology of Language and Communication is an international, peer-reviewed scientific journal committed to publishing high-quality research in the areas of language and communication. We have adhered to the Diamond Open Access standard since our inception in 1997, allowing both the submission of manuscripts and access to full-text articles free of charge.   Psychology of Language and Communication publishes in the Volume Open mode. A new, single Volume Open is initiated at the beginning of each calendar year. Articles accepted for publication are continuously published in the yearly Volume Open, at a rate of about 1-2 articles per month.   We operate under Fair Open Access Principles and CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. We assure the quality of our manuscripts by a thorough assessment by the editorial team and a double-blind peer review process. We follow the COPE publication ethics principles.   Scope   We publish articles on various aspects of psychological studies on language and communication processes in both children and adults. This includes language production and comprehension, the brain's cognitive and social bases of speech, the nature and strategies of various types of discourse, language development, disorders of linguistic and communicative competences, corpus studies, social media communication, psychological text analysis, social perception of spoken and written language, and human-AI communication.   Psychology of Language and Communication integrates previously disparate perspectives and approaches in the psychology of communication into one place, promoting an interdisciplinary perspective on language and communication and providing a forum for researchers from all over the world. We welcome manuscripts representing perspectives in psychology, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, and computer science, provided they align with the journal's central focus. We believe that through these multiple perspectives, we can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the role that language and communication processes play in our world. We welcome original empirical studies (as full-length articles or short reports), replication studies, and reports of null findings. We are also keen to report on methodological advancements in the fields of language and communication research, theoretical papers, and literature reviews.   We are eager to collaborate with students and Early Career Researchers who have conducted solid work but might require additional support and feedback to prepare their work for peer-reviewed publication.   We encourage the proposal of special issues in two ways. First, researchers can suggest calls for papers, act as guest editors, and collaborate with us. Secondly, we invite conference and symposium organizers to contact us in advance regarding the publication of special issues. We are eager to provide an outlet for high-quality, thematically consistent collections of papers following a conference. Possible themes include both novel areas and approaches in the psychology of language and communication as well as overviews and critical reflections on established topics.   Why submit    All submissions undergo a preliminary assessment by a member of the Editorial Board and are then sent out for a thorough evaluation to two or three peer reviewers in a double-blind review process, where the identities of authors and reviewers are kept confidential.   Promotion of each published article.   Fast publishing.   Publishing without charge.    We are indexed in the following databases, among others:    Scopus   DOAJ   PsychINFO   EBSCO    Rejection Rate    80%    Follow us on Twitter - X       Archiving   Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.   For previous issues (1997–2007) go to plc.psychologia.pl/   Plagiarism Policy   The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process.   Co-financing   Psychology of Language and Communication is co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Education and Science (Ministerstwo Edukacji i Nauki) under the program "Rozwój Czasopism Naukowych" (RCN/SP/0485/2021/1).   Obituary Tribute: Ida Kurcz   Obituary Tribute: Jan E. Okuniewski   Obituary Tribute: Grace Wales Shugar 

Volume 18 (2014): Issue 2 (August 2014) - Children's Language and Communicative Knowledge, Part One. In Memory of Professor Grace Wales Shugar, Issue Editor: Barbara Bokus

Psychology of Language and Communication

Volume 18 (2014): Issue 2 (August 2014)

Children's Language and Communicative Knowledge, Part One. In Memory of Professor Grace Wales Shugar, Issue Editor: Barbara Bokus