A taxonomy developed for the study of the growth and development of written language from the perspective of social event was tested with a group of 68 children, aged three to six years. The subjects were presented with a wide variety of environmental print messages (road signs, toys, fast food signs, and household products) and were questioned regarding what the print said, what helped them determine the message, and anything else they might know about the object. Responses were analyzed from the semantic, syntactical, graphic, and semiotic perspectives, as well as in terms of response time and evolution. Results indicated tbe following: children pragmatically demonstrated highly developed levels of linguistic awareness; children expected print to be meaningful; and children's access to the pragmatic and semantic systems of language led to conventional control of the syntactic and symbolic systems of language. The latter finding is the reverse of the current instructional model. (DF)