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Article In: Interactional Problems and Their Resolutions in Natural Discourse in Languages in Taiwan
Edited by Miao-Hsia Chang
[Chinese Language and Discourse 17:2] 2026
► pp. 197–225

A longitudinal study of conversational repairs in Mandarin mother – child interaction

 | National Chengchi University | National Chengchi University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
Research on conversational repairs in adult – child interaction focuses mainly on repairs as conversational skills or as part of a scaffolding process. This study integrated both through a longitudinal investigation of Mandarin mother – child interaction between four mother – child (2–3 years old) dyads, studying the repair types, linguistic levels, and maternal scaffolding strategies. The results showed that self-initiated self-repair (SISR) increased over time, whereas other-initiated self-repair (OISR) and other-initiated other-repair (OIOR) decreased. Moreover, a close relationship was observed between repair strategy and the linguistic level of the trouble source: morpho-syntactic, pragmatic, and lexico-semantic repairs were most frequent in SISR, OISR, and OIOR, respectively. Furthermore, the mothers adjusted their level of support through the strategic use of repair initiations and corrections. The findings suggest that children gradually develop the ability to monitor both their own speech and that of others and that mothers actively facilitate this through adaptive scaffolding strategies.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Repair in interaction
    • 1.2Repairs as conversational skills
    • 1.3Repairs as a scaffolding process
    • 1.4The present study
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants and data
    • 2.2Coding schemes
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1The proportion of repairs
    • 3.2Distribution of repair types across time points
    • 3.3Association between repair types and linguistic levels
    • 3.4Repair initiators in OISR
    • 3.5Explicitness of OIOR
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Gloss abbreviations
  • References
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