Interpretation I 149
05 M today (82) Clarification Beplyr reduction,
(9) Statement in Confirmation Move
08 Child I haven,t yet seen her today, CI saw her! only yesterday
(62) Response, give Information, in (8) Concluding Move
The two examples are quite representative of the way the meaning
structure is built up over several turns and utterances, each of them
allowing a further probing into the interlocutor's knowledge and
intentions. In both conversations the adult is sustaining, but this does
not prevent the child from asking questions that would give him all the
information he needs in order to make sense of the initial question. In
the second example (CS 16 04) one suspects that the child's questions are
designed with some other consideration in mind, and in fact some five
conversations later, when ,mana' Julieta finally shows up, Jojo's mother
asks her to go and fetch water, since she has not yet done it that day.
This shows how complex may be the process of interpretation that goes on
in apparently simple Interactions.
In the early '70s, when studies on adult-child talk were mostly concerned
with adults' input, extensions, expansions and recasting were considered
important strategies that adults use to facilitate and model children's
talk; differential use of these strategies among 'caretakers' was related
to children output and some pronounced more effective than others. Mow it
is suggested that the modelling function was 'only incidental to the
major function, which is that of negotiating an interpretation for the
child's utterance' (Yells,1985:405). Cross-cultural and ethnographic
studies (see 2.5.4, page 63) have added further dimensions to the issue,
noting for example how even small children are given responsibility in
the assignement of meaning, and how adults do not facilitate or model
children's talk in the same ways as among other groups.
It seems that in the community examined in this study, clarification
exchanges are one of the most common strategies to negotiate meaning in
Interactions among adults and children, without great differences in
discourse patterns between them. This consideration is based on the
frequency and distribution by speaker and by type of clarification