ABSTRACT
Intonation, along with other paralinguistic communication systems, is one of the early means by which infants communicate with their caregivers. While the set of speech act functions used by adults is open-ended, or at least as large as the set of performative verbs in English, mothers interacting with their 12-month-olds clearly are selecting only a small subset of well-practiced functions. The problem that faces the child is one of having to infer the relationship between rising intonation, particular speech act functions, and the English mood system in adult usage. Each mother and infant utterance was then coded for its discourse position and its speech act function. Finally, all mother's utterances were coded for the order and presence of surface structure elements, which distinguish the various moods of English. These decisions were made on the basis of order of constituents, not on intonation.
