General Editor's preface; Acknowledgements; Foreword by Dell Hymes; Preface; Part I Constructing conversation; 1 Conversational competence in children E. Ochs Keenan 2 Making it last: repetition in children's discourse E. Ochs Keenan 3 Evolving discourse - the next step E. Ochs Keenan 4 Looking and talking: the functions of gaze direction in the conversations of a young child and her mother Bambi B. Schieffelin 5 Topic as a discourse notion: a study of topic in the conversations of children and adults E. Ochs Keenan and Bambi B. Schieffelin 6 Questions of immediate concern E. Ochs Keenan, Bambi B. Schieffelin and Martha Platt; Part II Using discourse and syntax to express propositions; 7 Planned and unplanned discourse E. Ochs 8 Foregrounding referents: a reconsideration of left dislocation in discourse E. Ochs and Bambi B. Schieffelin; Part III Cross-cultural perspectives on caregiver-child communication; 9 Talking like birds: sounds play in a cultural perspective Bambi B. Schieffelin 10 Cultural dimensions of language acquisition E. Ochs; Bibliography; Author Index; Subject Index