Action bids in children with speech impairments: the case of marking

The paper illustrates a practice, which we have called “marking”, observed in play interactions between parents and children with Down Syndrome (DS) aged 3-8. Markings are minimal turns that rely on prosody, embodied resources and indexicality to foreground events within an ongoing activity and convey a stance toward them. Markings can be both retrospective and prospective, i.e. referring to a just-occurred or an incipient event. As first pair parts, they are open action bids that prompt recipients to display their co-orientation towards the referent. Responses from parents, i.e. second markings, can take the form of repeats or expansions matching intonation; after prospective marking recipient can also add support to the incipient activity the child has marked. We discuss marking as the core constituent of a larger family of actions for ‘sharing noteworthiness’, but also as a designedly undetermined action bid with specific conversational uses for children and adults alike.