Sunday 4 June 2017

Why Proposals Ontogenetically Precede Propositions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 138):
It is not difficult to see why offering and requesting precede telling and asking when a child is first learning how to mean. Exchanging information is more complicated than exchanging goods–&–services, because in the former the listener is being asked not merely to listen and do something but also to act out a verbal role — to affirm or deny, or to supply a missing piece of information…