Discourse acquisition along with the early and preschool age

Numerous studies in language acquisition have been revealed that oral discourse plays a crucial role in cognitive development and communicative development and has an impact on the so-called narrative mind, social intelligence, autobiographic memory, and personal identity. The paper is devoted to the main patterns and mechanisms of the acquisition of oral personal discourse along with the early and preschool age. The paper includes the following sub-topics: conversation acquisition, personal narrative and fictional story acquisition, relations between different genres of personal discourse, and cognitive prerequisites for the acquisition of personal discourse. The paper is based on the meta-analysis of numerous studies covering various fields of science (psychology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistics) and decades of scientific investigations in child development. The main issues discussed in the paper are acquisition and development of interaction structure (the skills necessary to initiate and to close a conversation); acquisition and development of conversation structure (the skills necessary for turn-taking and topic continuation); acquisition and development of some metadiscursive skills necessary for successful communication (e.g. to acknowledge communication breakdowns in a proper way); acquisition and development of some pragmatic skills necessary for successful communication (e.g. to modify speech characteristics according to the social role and status of the interlocutor and the context of the communication, to produce relevant speech acts); acquisition and development of narrative structure (story structure, episode completeness, internal state terms); and acquisition and development of narrative cohesion and coherence. The given issues are discussed from the perspective of the biological age and linguistic, communicative, and cognitive development.