How is context affecting Sophie's language and how is she using her language to achieve a function?

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Extract 2: Sophie at 36 months

        This text, much like extract one, is a conversation between Sophie and her mother while playing together, and Sophie is now 3. We can definitely assume that although it is likely that Sophie will still use holophrastic phrases in some aspects of her speech to convey meaning, generally she will be using a more advanced level of language and has a wider syntactical knowledge [knowledge of syntax?] to communicate any action she wants to achieve.  However, she still uses proto-language in order to express a feeling or meaning without words (“mm” in response to a question.).  In this extract is seems that Sophie still uses all aspects of functional language, according to the theorist Michael Halliday to achieve a function, both with regulatory and informative functions (although she uses these past the two-word stage as her vocabulary as expanded and her grammar/syntax becomes more complex), “put it there”, “me did some of those mummy”.

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A good example that Sophie is more advanced both cognitively and grammatically, is her use of the questioning word, “why” in response to a piece of the puzzle not fitting. This word, along with “when” is not normally used by children early on in their speech development due to the sense of past and future needed. It also seems that she is unable to phrase certain questions, She is able to use “what”, though it is unclear as to what the completed question would have been, as something occurs outside of the conversation, possibly one of them replaces or removes ...

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