ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a fuller understanding of language acquisition requires a model of language competence which is broader than the one traditionally held by linguists. It considers first speech to children and then turn to children’s learning of linguistic variation. Children, when they acquire language, acquire, along with the basic grammatical and lexical features, many special social markers that indicate such things as their sex, status and social class. One of the first kinds of contextual signals to which children become sensitive involves characteristics of the person with whom they are speaking. Pragmatic considerations may also affect the way speech is structured. It is necessary to determine the communicative intent of a particular interaction before selecting the appropriate linguistic devices. The social, communicative function of language has to be more broadly defined to include skills other than the ability to convey obscure information to invisible listeners.
