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This article addresses the acquisition of adverbs in a Czech monolingual boy from speech onset until age 6. This study is based on an analysis of authentic material: a corpus of transcriptions of audio recordings of the child in verbal interaction with adults, and diary records. The acquisition sequence and adverbial type frequency were analysed. The boy acquired adverbs of place first; although direction was acquired before location, location became more frequent. Adverbs relating to time were developed second, and location in time and repetition were the most frequent temporal aspects. Adverbs of degree followed; adverbs related to high degree were more frequently expressed than adverbs related to low degree. Adverbs of manner appeared last, in which adverbs related to a broader evaluative sense prevailed. Adverbs related to cause were manifested mostly by the interrogative proč / why. Interrelation between the acquisition of nominal and verbal categories was found: when the child acquired the category of nominal case and was able to use the construction of preposition + noun, the percentage of adverbs of place decreased. When he acquired the verbal aspect, the percentage of adverbs related to time decreased.

In this article, the longitudinal development of directives in first-language acquisition is described, and examples of the development of directive speech acts in one Czech child from the ages of 2.8 to 4.1 are included. The results show that the child acquires communicative strategies gradually and that he usually prefers one concrete strategy initially, which is later replaced by a new strategy corresponding with the acquisition of morphological categories. The child’s grammatical development is divided into two stages: the stage of protomorphology, when the child acquires basic morphological categories, and the stage of morphology proper / modular morphology, when the child uses a variety of grammatical means. In the stage of morphology proper, pragmatic factors become more influential as the child is no longer limited by a lack of grammatical competence.

The article presents a description of the acquisition of verbal grammatical categories in a monolingual Czech-speaking boy living in Prague. The author uses diary data for the pre-morphological stage and a corpus of transcriptions of audio recordings from ages 2.8 to 3.6 which covers the stage of protomorphology. In the pre-morphological stage, words are rote-learned and usually occur in one form per lemma. The protomorphological stage manifests itself through the emergence of grammatical oppositions. The occurrence of miniparadigms and the gradual development of grammatical forms are documented. First the child produces only a limited number of forms, and the 3rd person singular present tense functions as a base form. Then the 1st person singular and plural appear. In parallel, the child learns to use tenses - present tense prevails for imperfective verbs, future tense and past participles for perfective verbs. The directive function is expressed by infinitives before the imperative is acquired. The conditional and passives are acquired at the end of the protomorphological phase. The author argues that the main principle of acquisition is the pragmatic principle: a child acquires what he or she needs to express. The frequency of verbal means in input and their complexity also influence the sequence of acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the ways that students of the Faculty of Education, Charles University, Prague, define politeness. The data were obtained from 182 respondents. The definitions are compared to those presented by linguists and researchers in the area of linguistic politeness. The data are also quantified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a description of the acquisition of modal verbs and their grammatical forms in a Czech monolingual child. The author uses a corpus of transcriptions of audio recordings from age 2.8 to 3.6 which covers the phase of protomorphology and transition to morphology proper. Pragmatic function of verbs occurring in a child's speech is illustrated by examples, the occurrence of miniparadigms and gradual development of grammatical forms is documented. First the child produces only a limited number of forms - first just in repetitions, then the 3rd person singular present tense appears as a universal form. Finally the 1st person singular and plural forms appear. In parallel, the child learns to use the past tense, the future tense, conditional and passives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]