In this chapter, we first introduce the questions of when and how children start using connectives and discourse relations during their first years of life. We will see more specifically that mastering the complex form-function mappings involved in the understanding of many connectives is a complex task for young children. In addition, we will present research investigating school-age children’s comprehension of connectives, and show that it is only around the end of their primary school years that they fully understand frequent connectives. We will explore the causes of these difficulties, and discuss the differences between various connectives and discourse relations. We will then move on to other studies analyzing the way older children understand connectives, and see that their acquisition is not fully in place after primary school years, as teenagers keep developing their competence with connectives. Finally, we will briefly discuss the acquisition of connectives and discourse relations by children suffering from linguistic or cognitive impairments such as SLI and autism.

Language acquisition and World Englishes (WEs) research are two subdisciplines with their own theoretical approaches, classifications, terminologies, and methodologies for investigation. They also have distinct perspectives on otherwise similar phenomena, viz. manifestations of acquiring/learning a language. As early as 1986, Sridhar and Sridhar discerned “a lack of articulation between theories of SLA and research on the acquisition and use of IVEs [indigenized varieties of English]” (Sridhar and Sridhar 1986: 12) and prompted an integrated approach. However, this call remained largely unheard for about twenty years. Only quite recently have studies pointed to potential similarities and the connectedness of learner Englishes and WEs as well as the possibility, if not necessity, of an integrated approach to the two objects of inquiry. The current chapter provides a scholarly review of these developments. It starts out with a summary and discussion of the potential and need for an integration of the Second Language Acquisition and WEs research paradigms, ultimately expanding the focus to a joint treatment of WEs and First Language Acquisition research.