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This new landmark series provides a comprehensive overview of the entire field of pragmatics. It is based on a wide conception of pragmatics as the study of intentional human interaction in social and cultural contexts. In-depth articles discuss the foundations, major theories and most recent developments of pragmatics including philosophical, sociocultural and cognitive as well as methodological, contrastive and diachronic perspectives.

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This handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of a wide range of developmental and clinical issues in pragmatics. Principally, the contributions to this volume deal with pragmatic competence in a native language, in a second or foreign language, and in a selection of language disorders. The topics which are covered explore questions of production and comprehension on the utterance and discourse level. Topics addressed concern the acquisition and learning, teaching and testing, assessment and treatment of various aspects of pragmatic ability, knowledge and use. These include, for example, the acquisition and development of speech acts, implicatures, irony, story-telling and interactional competence. Phenomena such as pragmatic awareness and pragmatic transfer are also addressed. The disorders considered include clinical conditions pertaining to children and to adults. Specifically, these are, among others, autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome, and Alzheimer´s disease.

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Klaus P. Schneider, Bonn, Germany; Elly Ifantidou, Athens, Greek.

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