use of personal names in naturalistic interactions

[Jiansheng Guo]

Dear Funknet Colleagues,

We are working on the gender differences in using personal names among English-
speaking and Mandarin-speaking children.  If you can give us any reference
on the functions of using personal names in interactive discourse, we would
really appreciate it.

One obvious, though not so interesting, function is to get attention.  Also
there is the variation of different address terms for power and social distance.
But since children simply use first names (or full names in the Chinese case),
we are primarily interested in studies about why children (or people) use
names at all, and what pragmatic/discourse functions they serve verses
utterances without names.

Thanks so much for your help in advance.

All my best,

Guo

Jiansheng Guo
Psychology Department
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand

P.S.  Apologies for reduplication if you happen to be on the CHILDES list as
      well.