CLASSIFYING COMMUNICATIVE ACTS IN CHILDRENS INTERACTIONS

Describing speakers' repertoires of communicative intents and rules fo r expressing those intents is crucial to any complete description of t he language capacity. Many different systems for classifying speakers' communicative intents have been developed and used in research analyz ing both the acquisition of speech acts and the nature of the communic ative deficits shown by various language-impaired populations. We argu e, though, that these systems have typically been limited in scope, in applicability across the full developmental range, or in their theore tical foundations. The criteria for an adequate system for analyzing c ommunicative intents are discussed, and a system proposed which meets those criteria.