This article explores the social and cognitive implications of sibling caregiving among the Zinacantec Maya of Mexico and the Wolof of Senegal. Ethnographic video data of sibling caregiving interactions were collected, focusing on children ages three to 13 years interacting with their two‐year‐old siblings. Sibling relations in both cultures reflect a system of multiage play, the children's sensitivity to age and gender hierarchies, and the older siblings'role as teachers of their younger siblings. Differences in the two groups include more verbal exchanges and wordplay with the two‐year‐old Wolof children and more overt efforts by older Zinacantec siblings to incorporate the two year olds into their group activity. The data indicate an overall pattern of cultural transmission by which older siblings teach younger ones in the context of caring for them. The pattern is nuanced by each group's social organization and rules for social interaction, exhibited in the children's play.

A large number of studies conducted in a European or North American setting have shown that siblings and preschool-age children offer the young child a less responsive language model than the mother does. By looking at the participation of young Wolof children from Senegal in dialogical interaction with an adult or an older child, the present study was aimed at drawing up a table of the situations that give rise to the first conversational activities of Wolof children, and at analysing the support provided to the child by adults and older siblings. Ten children between the ages of 21 and 27 months were observed in interaction with an adult and/or an older sibling (ranging in age between 3 years 6 months and 10 years) in their usual life environment. An essential characteristic of this environment is the existence of polyadic communication. In this polyadic setting, the adult appears to impel the child into joint action and multi-party dialogue. While older children address toddlers mainly with requests for action, in certain socially codified interactions they prompt the young one to enter into the dialogue. In play situations, however, it is the younger one who manages to introduce or reintroduce topics and whose verbal initiatives are largely taken up by older children.The present observations of interactions between older and younger children suggest that child-to-child speech plays an important role here in the development of communication in the young language learner. * I would like to thank Diogal Ndiaye and Ndeye Ncnnc Fall for their Wolof translation and Vivian Waltz for hcr help with the English.

The infant-directed speech of Wolof-speaking Senegalese mothers and French-speaking mothers living in Paris were compared to relate infantdirected communicative acts to the value system of the society to which the speaker belongs, and to describe the child's place in those societies. Motherinfant linguistic interactions with 4-month-old infants were recorded ( ve dyads in the French group and four in the Wolof group). The discourse variables of the pragmatic and semantic categories in the mothers' speech were analysed. The cross-cultural analysis included a comparison of the conventional versus shifted use of person markers by the mothers in the two cultures. The results demonstrated some features common to both groups, namely, a high percentage of expressive speech acts and the importance of affect-related statements. Some culture-speci c emphases and tendencies were also noted. Whereas the French mothers' conversation al exchanges with their infants were dyadic in organisation and centred on the immediate physical environment, the Wolof mothers frequently expanded the dyadic framework to introduce third parties as conversation al partners but talked very little about the immediate physical environment. Thus, it appears that cultural conceptions in uence not only the content of mother-infant exchanges but also their participant structure.By studying a well-speci ed social and interactional situation-"dialogues" between mothers and their babies-in two different cultural contexts

Data from cross-cultural studies on parental behaviour during early social interaction suggest that structural and universal features should be differentiated from culturally specific ones. No direct relations can be assumed to exist between specific forms of child rearing and development of skills in the child. However child rearing practices can have long term effects and affect social behaviours.As an illustration, we compare interactive styles of 40 French and African mothers living in Paris in an object play situation, with their 10 and 15 month-olds. French mothers' interactions with their children are illustrative of tight connections between verbal and non-verbal behaviour. Action is the basis or anchor point for verbal exchange; and this repetition or verbal redundancy yields discourse-on-actions which to a certain extent distances the action and allows for a generalization process to take place. In contrast, African mothers' interactions with their in/ants present less verbal scaffolding of non-verbal behaviour. This type of interaction allows for a greater «disjunction» or separation of non-verbal and verbal communication. African cultures do not assign the spoken word with the educational function of structuring and planning activities. However, the models generated by the school system correspond to other types of obligations which are strongly affected by temporal perspectives.One of the aims of cross-cultural research on parental behaviour and child development, as is the case in anthropology, is to go beyond inventories of disparities to arrive at universals of human behaviour. Universals are not always easy to detect. It is argued here that applying a linguistic model to parental behaviour differentiating pancultural structures from morphological variants may be a powerful tool in this regard. Ethnological accounts of child rearing practices first drew attention to the variety of forms of parent-child interactions. Across cultures the number of caregivers, amount of physical contact, presence of toys, and the social representation of the child all constitute variables which shape the context in which exchanges take place.The author would like to thank Connie Greenbaum for revising the English version. Special thanks are extended to the staff of the Hopital de la Croix Saint-Simon health centre (P.M.!.).

To cite this article: Jacqueline Rabain-Jamin (1998) Polyadic language socialization strategy: The case of toddlers in senegal, Discourse Processes, 26:1, 43-65,

Massage techniques and postural manipulation used by West African women immigrants in Paris were studied, with the aim of demonstrating that culturally regulated caretaking practices have an influence on infant motor development. Twenty-five infants were observed between the ages of 3 and 12 months and 9 and 15 months. Frequency of massage and its accompanying set of physical exercises were found to be related to age at onset of independent walking. The findings show that infants receiving daily massage walk significantly earlier than infants who do not receive maeaage, thus confirming other reports that vestibular and postural stimulation have a positive effect on motor development. These results are discussed in relation to the observed frequency of contact and of physical games with the caregiver for a smaller sample of three infants, and to parental expectations about the age of acquisition of certain cognitive and motor abilities. African immigrant mothers expect their infants to sit and to walk earlier than French mothers.The conclusion emphasizes the contribution of social anthropology, which shows that in all cultures, physical development and body changes elicit symbolic practices and a search for explanation.

During the period of transition between prelinguistic and linguistic communication (the second year of life) the communicative signals are mostly non-conventionalized and their semiotic power is relatively low. In this paper, communication sequences observed at 16 and 22 months are analysed in order to determine how the partner's joint communicative activity allows the sharing of intentions conveyed by gestural and/or vocal signals. The adult's responses to two types of gestures -holding out an object and pointing -during joint play were analysed. In addition, the discussion of a series of examples shows the part played by the adult in the performance of relatively complex speech acts. These analyses suggest that the adult partner's interpretation of the child's intention depends on several cues: who is currently carrying out the activity and how, the child's age and, in some cases, already existing routines. The respective roles of gestures and speech when produced in conjunction with each other are discussed.

Conventional and displaced uses of pronouns in maternal speech to refer to the baby were investigated in a developmental study of six mother—infant dyads using video-recordings of their free play at three, seven and ten months. These pronominal uses were analysed in a number of semantic contexts to determine how interactive situations influence the use of different types of pronouns. Results show that third- and first-person pronouns occur significantly more often in the semantic context of affect-oriented activities than in the semantic context of goal-directed activities. For second-person pronouns the results are the opposite. The contrast found between these two contexts, i.e. where the child is presented as the agent of a meaningful activity or not, shows how the place constructed for the baby as an interlocutor in maternal speech evolves with age. This study underlines the part the third person plays with its descriptive value in the acquisition of the system of pronouns.