ABSTRACT
In the preceding six chapters our aim has been to describe the linguistic categories that we used and to relate them to sociological and psychological categories. The amount of detail with which we have treated these categories has varied: some categories have been discussed in detail; others not. This variation reflects two things mainly: the relevance of the categories for our research and the extent of our knowledge at the present time. Generally, we have regarded as most relevant to our research those grammatical categories which are associated with particular functions, so, for example, in our treatment of the verbal group we considered how it could be used for making various kinds of statements, predictive, hypothetical, precautionary, etc. We were much less concerned about describing the rules for correct English usage (standard English) and showing in great detail where children depart from these rules either as a result of linguistic immaturity or of exposure to non-standard dialects. It is thought that ultimately functional categories will provide the best bridge between linguistic categories on the one hand and sociological and psychological ones on the other.
