This paper examines children's early attempts at describing events absent in space and time, referred to as the "reportative function." The first part of the paper offers some explanations for the late emergence of the reportative function in young children's speech. Part two presents examples of children's attempts to report past events and discusses them, with attention to: (1) the situations in which the reportative function is likely to occur; (2) the strategies used by the children; and (3) the means by which adults try to elicit the reportative function. With the exception of one example from an English-speaking child, the data which served as the basis for the study were collected from young Brazilian children, ages 1.8-2.0. Analysis of spontaneous speech samples revealed that the reportative function typically occurred in the context of adult-child dialogue. The topic was introduced by either the adult or child and was narrated in a question-answer mode with the adult asking questions in an attempt to elicit details of the event from the child. Level of success at using the reportative function was determined from the point of view of the hearer rather than the speaker; an attempt was considered successful if a hearer unfamiliar with the event could reconstruct it on the basis of the child's narration. Success seemed to depend primarily on two factors: (1) the child's ability to linguistically encode a sequence of events; and (2) the adult's ability to ask questions which would elicit the details of the event. (Author/AM)