Pragmatics in Kannada Speaking Normal Children and Intellectual Disability

Abstract

Abstract: Human language is a unique mental entity. It is a system of symbols that greatly enhances the ability of humans to represent aspects of the world, to think and to communicate with each other. Studies from many diverse disciplines show that language has a complex structure and that its use involves many diverse interacting psychological operations (Caplan, 1992). Functional communication involving the language code helps us to accomplish specific goals, such as to inform others, relate to events not in our immediate physical environments, to reason, to update our knowledge of the world, to think privately and so on. Language is made up of socially shared rules that include what words mean. Components of the language are grouped under the ‘form’ (phonology, morphology, syntax) ‘content’ (semantics) and ‘use’ (pragmatics). The study highlights the need to carry out more research in this area for better understanding of language acquisition among these children in order to develop both assessment and intervention programmes. Presently, the lack of acquisition data has hinged the development of any standardized test in Kannada. Hence, the present study aims to explore Pragmatics in Kannada speaking children with the objective of analysing the data among these children across 4 to 6 years of age. The results suggest that all TD group have well developed pragmatic skills by 4 to 6 years and they are still acquiring some skills.