The child handling the topic with a gesture Sari Karjalainen, University of Helsinki, Department of Speech Sciences _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 2 nd Congrès de l’International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS) INTERACTING BODIES – CORPS EN INTERACTION, Lyon – France, juin 2005 _________________________________________________

Data session Abstract The child handling the topic with a gesture The aim of the datasession is to look, how far the child can topically go by using gestures, especially, when talking about non-noticeable objects. In the data session we will see one example, how the two language users, differing in their linquistic competence, co-operate topically. More specifically, we see how the child topicalizes a referent that is out of sight. Verbal and preverbal resources and, particularly, aspects of co-operative sequential repair-like structures are discussed in the data session. The video data presented here concerns a boy (at the age of approximately 18 months) and his father. The current child is one of the children in the data base that is composed of videotaped mutual free picture book conversations between adults and typically developed children at preverbal stage. The current child has not reached the spoken language yet. Still he manages to be involved in succesful communication acts with the people in his surroundings. The child’s communicative resources include not only deictics but also iconic gestures, along other actions and gaze. The preliminary findings concerning the topical negotiation and the iconics (as its ‘main’ resource) will be elaborated further and discussed in more detail in a forthcoming paper. Les gestes de l’enfant et gestion du topique L’objectif de cette étude est d’analyser l’interaction entre un adulte et un enfant en phase de développement préverbale (un enfant normal qui ne parle pas encore). L’enfant participe à l’interaction avec des gestes. J’examine à travers l’analyse conversationnelle la coopération topicale des interlocuteurs. Les données vidéo ont été obtenues en enregistrant des situations de lecture de livres d’images entre un adulte et un enfant. Les exemples évoqués dans cette présentation proviennent tous d’un cas, celui d’un garçon âgé d’environ 18 mois. Les données ont été transcrites sous forme de partitions contenant notamment les gestes et les autres activités de l’enfant et le discours de l’adulte.

The data session concerns a clip of one case (a boy (~18 mo) and his father) The data base: Naturalistic picture book conversations between adult and typically developed child 7 families involved Children: From 1 to 2 years of age: the preverbal ‘cross sections’ at the period of established use of gestures Adults: Mother, father or caretaker Total 6-10 hours of video recordings of each pair made by parents: 1-2 -week recording period a month; each period consists of episodes varying between 5-15 minutes in length Video data

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