Requestive speech leads to referential clarity in Turkish preschool children

Abstract

Communication is effective to the extent that it takes into account shared and unshared information between the speaker and the addressee. For example, imagine two children who are constructing paper boats in their art class, and a big pair of scissors and a small pair of scissors are on the table. If one of the children asks for “the scissor”, then she needs to specify the size of the desired one (eg, the big pair of scissors) for the communication to proceed smoothly. Otherwise, her addressee would not be able to understand which specific pair of scissors is desired. But if one of the scissors is occluded from the addressee, for example by a coloring book, specification of the size of the desired pair of scissors is redundant. As this example demonstrates, speakers and addressees need to keep track of what is visually accessible to their communicative partners for an effective communication. In other words, speakers and listeners must collaborate in a framework of common ground, defined as the sum of their mutual knowledge, beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes (Clark, 1992; Clark & Marshall, 1981).