15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15) Barcelona, Spain August 3-9, 2003

Turn-Taking and Prosodic Resources in Adult-Child Talk

Bill Wells (1), Juliette Corrin (2)

(1) University of Sheffield, UK
(2) University College London, UK

The role of prosodic features in the management of turn-taking is investigated in interactions between an English-learning boy aged 19-21 months and his mother. The child is able to project turn continuation and completion prosodically. However, on occasions of overlapping talk, it is the mother who works to resolve the situation. She does this by differential deployment of clusters of temporal and prosodic behaviours, characterised as 'curtail and recycle' vs. 'persist to completion'. These two embody different stances by the mother towards the status of the child's overlapped turn in relation to the unfolding talk.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Wells, Bill / Corrin, Juliette (2003): "Turn-taking and prosodic resources in adult-child talk", In ICPhS-15, 127-130.