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In:Usage-based Perspectives on Language and Language Acquisition: In honour of Heike Behrens
Edited by Karin Madlener-Charpentier, Marjolijn H. Verspoor, Mirjam Weder and Annelies Häcki Buhofer
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 35] 2026
► pp. 200–222

Chapter 7
The pragmatic development of multi-sentential discourse

Authors
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
UB approaches have recently expanded to investigate the active role language learners have in unfolding conversations while using language to do things together (Behrens & Pfänder, 2022, p. 231). In this chapter, I will expand on this notion further from a pragmatic point of view, defined by Behrens (2009) as the relation between language forms and their functions with respect to language users as opposed to the world they are talking about (semantics). We will review how children’s language develops once they have surmounted the hurdles of prelinguistic development, and of learning words and early sentence structures, so that we find them able to string sentences together. At this point, managing topics extended in time relies on pragmatic skills that allow us to choose linguistic forms in harmony with our human cognitive systems — limited memory spans, fluctuating attentional states, and models of the world, the other and the discourse — so that we can find joint purpose through communication. Here, cognitive-conceptual development and language development go hand in hand.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Children’s discourse comprehension
    • 2.1Inferring how what is said is relevant to the QUD
    • 2.2Making pragmatic inferences during reading comprehension
    • 2.3Anaphora resolution — Inferences based on the QUD and accessibility
  • 3.Children’s discourse production — The case of narratives
    • 3.1Contextualising narratives
    • 3.2Marking purpose in narrative
    • 3.3Managing attention and memory in narrative: Accessibility
  • 4.Conclusion
  • References
References (82)
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