This study examined the effects of maternal directive and nondirective styles of interaction on the emergence of verbal communicative intent in toddlers, and sought to understand the association between maternal interaction styles and young children's pragmatic acquisition. During free play, maternal utterances of 12 mother-child dyads, with children aged 25-29 months, were recorded. Utterances were coded as directive (signifying intent to elicit or modify the verbal and nonverbal behaviors of the child) or non-directive (providing new information or augmenting the verbal or nonverbal behaviors of the child). Children's utterances were coded as either expressing communicative intent or serving discourse functions. Results showed that: (1) children of mothers with directive interactive styles used "responding" with greater frequency and "requesting information" with less frequency than children of non-directive mothers; (2) maternal interaction style did not influence topic introduction and topic maintenance; and (3) children of non-directive mothers used a significantly more diverse vocabulary than children of directive mothers. In conclusion, behaviors are listed that may function as facilitative strategies for the development of communicative intent in children: parallel talk; reporting; imitation; expansion; and modeling. (Includes 11 references) (JDD)