The Prosodic Constitution of the Enunciation between Mother-Baby

Abstract

In the present case study, we discuss meaning production, which is full of prosodic elements in early life. We align this discussion with Bakhtin's observations about the characteristics of enunciation. With this alignment, we invested in explanations about the linguistic status of prosody in dialogues between adults and babies in the process of language acquisition. The data we discuss consist of videographic records of interactions of two adult-child dyads, one French and one Brazilian, both recorded during daily life activities.[1] In the analyses, we compared variations in the intonational curves of the adults’ utterances with the babies’ vocalizations. In the results, we discuss how these variations reflected in practices of axiological positions, discussed in the context of enunciative appropriation. We conclude that prosodic aspects are the main resources for enunciation at the beginning of life and they enable the link between language practices and human development.

[1] Data referring to the French child are public and can be found at CHILDEs https://media.talkbank.org/phonbank/French/Paris/Madeleine/; as for the Brazilian child, the approval of the Ethics Committee Process is CAAE: 00784312.3.0000.5208.