Adult Responses to Young Children's Communicative Gestures: Joint Achievement of Speech Acts

During the period of transition between prelinguistic and linguistic communication (the second year of life) the communicative signals are mostly non-conventionalized and their semiotic power is relatively low. In this paper, communication sequences observed at 16 and 22 months are analysed in order to determine how the partner's joint communicative activity allows the sharing of intentions conveyed by gestural and/or vocal signals. The adult's responses to two types of gestures - holding out an object and pointing - during joint play were analysed. In addition, the discussion of a series of examples shows the part played by the adult in the performance of relatively complex speech acts. These analyses suggest that the adult partner's interpretation of the child's intention depends on several cues: who is currently carrying out the activity and how, the child's age and, in some cases, already existing routines. The respective roles of gestures and speech when produced in conjunction with each other are di...