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Communicative functions of pitch range and pitch direction in infants*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Haydée Marcos
Haydée Marcos*
Affiliation:
Université Paris V (C.N.R.S.)
*
Laboratoire de Psychologic du Developpement et de l'Education de l'Enfant, Université Paris V (C.N.R.S.), 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France.
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Abstract

The communicative functions of pitch direction and pitch range during the second year were investigated. The research focusses on initial plus repeated requests, either for objects or for co-operation, which were contrasted against giving, showing and labelling. Infants aged 1; 2 to 1;10 were observed in interaction with their mothers in a semistructured situation. Vocalizations were coded separately for communicative function and for prosodic features. Results show that pitch range is consistently higher (1) for repeated requests than for initial requests for objects and (2) for initial requests for objects and for co-operation than for labelling. Giving and showing have an intermediate rank between requests and labelling. Trends in prosodic contours were observed in both requests and labelling: rising tones were more frequently associated with requests whereas falling tones appeared more often in conjunction with labelling.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 255 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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Footnotes

*

This study was supported by a grant from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) to F. Jodelet, M. le Rouzo and H. Marcos. The research was carried out when the author was located at the Laboratoire de Psycho-Biologie de l'Enfant (Paris). The author wishes to thank particularly Anna Pezé who made valuable contributions to carrying out the experiment and to its coding and analysis.

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