The purpose of the present study was to investigate the use of final endings of three to four-year-old children. The use of final endings represents sentence completion and listener honorification. Thirty two children participated in the study and the language samples were collected during their play. The sentence completion results showed that the subjects showed an order of explanation, interrogation, engagement, command, exclamation, caution, collaboration and permission. Also, the results showed that four-year-old children used a larger variety of final endings than did the three-year-old children. In listener honorification, the subjects showed the order of ‘hai’, ‘hai-yo’, ‘hai-ra’, ‘ha-gei’, ‘ha-o’ and ‘hap-sho’. Also, four-year-old children performed better than the three-year-old children in the formal style. On the basis of these results, child developmental characteristics and clinical implications are also discussed. |