Pragmatic Patterns in Child Syntax

This paper will begin with an examination of the role of pragmatic patterns in the syntax of two Hungarian children, Moni and Zoli, and will conclude with a comparison of these data with results form other languages. It will be necessary to consider both wordbased and pragmatic patterns, since some word combinations what appear to be pragmatic may actually be word-based. Despite various methodological difficulties involved in the study of the learning of pragmatic patterns based on expressive focusing and logical focusing (MacWhinney, 1975), these patterns are central to Hungarian syntax (Dezs¨ø, 1972) and must somehow be learned by the child