Abstract
The present study investigates the early development of directive speech acts by two Lithuanian children of different gender, a girl aged 1;8-2;8 and a boy aged 1;6-2;7, and is based on longitudinal data of mother-child interactions. The results show that expressions of agent-oriented modality appeared at the very beginning of the observation period when both children produced direct and indirect requests. Direct requests were expressed by one-word utterances consisting of nouns, adverbs, infinitives, or imperatives and indirect requests contained statements of desire, need and hortatives. Toward the end of observation, the children acquired various other ways to express requests. The present study examines the working hypothesis that in Lithuanian culture boys and girls are socialized differently, namely that boys are exposed to more directives in the form of imperatives whereas girls are addressed by more indirect forms of requests. This hypothesis has not been confirmed by our results as more direct requests were found in the girl’s CDS than the boy’s. More research is needed in order to bring to light which other factors besides gender and age may play a role in developing the important communicative function of expressing requests. It might be expected that gender differences become more relevant for children beyond age three.
