Conversation Gambits

Edith has just screamed 'I don't want to go to bed yet!' at me, or near enough. What she actually actually produced is a six or seven syllable utterance with rising intonation and emphasis on the second and last syllables, which are stretched into a falling cry. 

Even though the language isn't there yet, the intonation, the music of the utterance is spot on and very specifically English. I know this because I often try and get French or Italian students to stretch their syllables for emphasis when I'm teaching intonation, and trust me, they don't like it. So this gets me thinking, how much of these intonation patterns has she learned from us? Sure I don't spend that much time protesting loudly about going to bed. But I'm sure she's listened to plenty of other expressions of protest coming from my mouth. So maybe Edie is tuning in to the forms of discourse first and picking up waveforms. Perhaps there aren't actually that many to learn. 

We have a book in our speaking and listening library called Conversational Gambits By Keller and Warner from the old days of TEFL in 1988. They get to about 60 different gambits in their book split into opening gambits, linking gambits and responding gambits. But you could probably shave it down to a fairly small group of short expressions that Edith must be tuning into and mastering one by one. the protest gambit, well that seems a fairly good place to start, especially when you're a small person and you've got two big people telling you what to do all the time.