ABSTRACT
Children's abilities to master the diversification of language use may be said to develop through their participation in interactions with different partners in different discourse contexts. Children's discourse development needs to be examined in the diverse contexts of participant relations, and the communicative roles and activities to which they are admitted and that determine how children may participate. This chapter reviews the difference between two notions: participant structure and participation structure. The notions of participant structure and structures of participation lie implicitly in our conceptualizations of the child as a social interactor. Growing participatory knowledge and skills will enable children to co-create participation structures with others in new circumstances. The utterances produced by participants that realized their role acts formed a conversational structure. Adults provide specific kinds of support to the development of sociodramatic play in the preschool years. The chapter also describes four levels of adult-child co-elaboration of scenario text: base level, first level, second level and third level.
