PhD ThesisChildren's language acquisition does not consist solely of
the mastery,, of linguistic form and structure, children must also
acquire the rules for appropriate use of that form and structure.
To become competent speaker-hearers children must learn how to
handle linguistic variability.
Almost nothing is knoýnabout how children acquire the'
sociolinguistic skills'and patterns of sociolinguistic variability
which have been reported for adult speakers. This thesis therefore
investigates some aspects of'the structure and functioning of
linguistic variability in children's speech. It is shown that
non-segmental variability-in children's speech constitutes an
area of primý, importance for study. Children systematically
employ the resources of non-segmental variability for a variety
of social and affective purposes. The structured nature of this
non-segmental variability is revealed by a quantitative analysis
of the prosodic and-paralinguistic features in children's speech