ABSTRACT
As part of their play, children often run a vocal or verbal ‘soundtrack’. This can fulfil any number of functions. It may simply mirror physical action-e.g. of pushing a car round a certain course, cornering bends, uphill etc.; it may be an absent-minded kind of accompaniment-‘dodidido do’; it may be commentary, or characters taking roles in a story. Young children move fluidly across the boundaries between vocalisation, speech and song; voicing their play can be kaleidoscopic in its use of sound and language, continually shifting as the activity engages them.
