A Child’s Display of Sequential Knowledge through Repetition of Boundary Tones: A Case Study

Although repetition of prosody plays a significant role in children’s language development, few studies have investigated the interactional role of children’s use of boundary tones in talk-in-interaction. This study investigates the interaction between a two year old Korean child and her caretakers to describe the child’s ability to participate in building adjacency pair sequences using boundary tone repetition. Analysis shows that the child acts as a competent interactant by building sequences, with the adult’s evaluative repeats following immediately without delay after the child’s initiation attempts. Adults are seen to ratify the child’s turn with reference to articulation rather than with regard to interactional significance. The findings support constructivist approaches to language development by showing how the child builds up an inventory of constructions derived from interaction between what she hears and what she wants to say, specifically through boundary tones. Repeats of boundary tones are identified as providing opportunities to learn different social actions performed through sentence final intonation.