Analyzes ellipsis, pronominalization, emphatic stress, the indefinite article, the definite article, and initialization as used by child and adult speakers of English, Hungarian, and Italian. Conclusions: marked differences between the languages; early learning of the functions of the devices; some changes with age. (Author/EJS)

Children and adults speaking English, Hungarian, and Italian were asked to describe sets of pictures which manipulated the pragmatic category of givenness. The working hypothesis was that there exist rule-governed relations between the perception of certain categorical aspects of the communicative situation and the use of certain conventional…