FUNCTIONALISM
A semantic approach to syntax associated with M.A.K. Halliday. Applied to language acquisition, it foregrounds the part played by the child’s wish or need to communicate pragmatically. The theory resembles other social-interactionist accounts by placing importance on the interaction, both verbal and gestural, between carer and child and on the ‘exchange of meanings’ to which it gives rise. Much of the evidence supporting the theory draws upon Halliday’s observations of the early language of his son, Nigel.
When an infant is between 9 and 15 months, it shows signs of constructing proto-words from its babble. It reserves certain sounds or sequences of sounds for particular purposes: examples would be a child consistently using [na] when it wanted something and [n ] for a taste it enjoyed.
The child’s early words are said to represent four general functions:
instrumental (‘I want’)
interactional (‘me and you’)
regulatory (‘Do as I tell you’)
personal (‘Here I am’)
To these, the child later adds three more:
imaginative (‘Let’s pretend’)
informative (‘I have something to tell you’)
heuristic (‘Tell me why’)
In a second phase, there is a gradual increase in the range of meanings which the child learns to express within these functional areas, even if the forms used are not those of adult language. This coincides with what other commentators term the vocabulary explosion; Halliday argues that it is a semantic and syntactic explosion as well. The personal and heuristic functions are said to merge into a single mathetic function (involving ‘learning’ through language), while the other five merge into a rudimentary pragmatic system (involving ‘doing’ through language).
See also: Social-interactionism
Further reading: Cattell (2000: Chap. 8); Halliday (1975)
