CHILDES English Sprott Corpus

Richard Sprott
Department of Human Development
California State University East Bay
richard.sprott@csueastbay.edu

Participants:	12
Type of Study:	xxx
Location:	xxxx
Media type:	audio
DOI:	doi:10.21415/T5V88M

Citation information

Pak, M., Sprott, R.A. & Escalera, E. (1996). Little words, big deal: The development of discourse markers. In D.I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis and J. Guo (eds) Social Interactions, Social Contexts and Language: Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Sprott, R. A. (1994). The development of discourse and the acquisition of connectives and clause combinations: An analysis of three-year olds' linguistic production. [Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley]. University Microfilms International.

Sprott, R.A. (1992a). Children's use of discourse markers in disputes: Form-function relations and discourse in child language. Discourse Processes, 15, (4), 423-440.

Sprott, R.A. (1992b). On giving reasons in verbal disputes: The development of justifying. Argumentation and Advocacy, 29, (2), 61-76.

Project Description

The conversations of 10 three-year-old and 13 four-year-old children in a university nursery school were video- and audio-recorded during normal, unstructured activity over a period of several weeks. The activities included pretend play in a "playhouse" and construction activities with blocks or sand. The children were predominantly from middle-class, highly-educated families with a range of racial and ethnic heritages. The 3-vear-old class met in the morning, and the 4-year-old class met in the afternoon, both using the same classroom. Due to the naturalistic observational method, the length of time that each child appeared on the tapes was not controlled. The time ranged from 20 minutes to 5 hours. A total of 15 hours were taped in the 3-year-old class, and 10 hours in the 4-year-old class.