Prosodic continuation and emotional regulation in interactions between 4-6 month-old babies and their caretakers
| Panel: | P67 - Affect and Emotion in Interaction, Part 1: Everyday Conversation |
| Author: | Kahri, Mikko |
| Abstract: | |
| In the collaborative production of prosodic units in English conversation as described by Beatrice Szczepek Reed (2006), one of the speakers completes or extends an intonation contour started by another. This typically takes place in situations which involve the collaborative production of a syntactic construction at the same time. This presentation describes collaborative prosodic productions without joint syntactic production in interactions between Finnish 4-6 month-old babies and their caretakers. Examples will be shown in which one of the babies from our data collection continues an intonation contour started by her mother, completing a prosodic unit started by her. Examples of mothers extending prosodic contours started by their babies will be shown as well . In the examples of extension of prosodic contour by mother, babies initial expressions seem often distressed. It will be argued that the mothers extending expressions are designed to modify the baby’s ongoing, developing emotional state, and thus, to regulate it. In the examples of prosodic completion by the baby, the mother has in her previous turns provided models of the type of contour that the baby then completes. These examples show, among other things, the baby’s ability to perceive continuities between adjacent expressions. |
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