ABSTRACT
We have focused in this book on children’s learning about communication from participation in various constellations of conversational settings. Most of the chapters have dealt with familial interactions, though a few (e.g., chaps. 5 and 10) have also displayed the value of analyzing peer interactions, both in revealing novel aspects of children’s competence in using language, and in creating contexts for children’s development of novel pragmatic skills. The range of phenomena dealt with has been broad, but it would be a mistake to think of the skills focused on in the previous chapters as the only ones that children need to learn in becoming competent members of their language communities. In this chapter, we introduce two new themes:
• A consideration of domains in which development continues after the preschool years, and outside the relatively informal contexts of family conversations and preschool peer groups.
