O’Shannessy, CarmelGreen, JenniferDavis, VanessaBartlett, JessieNelson, AliceJones, AshleighFoster, Denise2025-12-162025-12-160726-8602ORCID:/0000-0003-4914-9693/work/192149608https://hdl.handle.net/1885/733794951From an early age children learn to recognize and make use of the semiotic resources present in their immediate communicative environments. For children in Aboriginal families in Central Australia, these resources encompass everyday speech, sign language, gesture, and the symbolic conventions found in narrative practices such as sand drawing. Successful face-to-face interaction rarely involves only one of these ways of communicating with others–multimodality is the norm. There has been little exploration of multimodality in Aboriginal Australia in the context of children’s interactions with others. This study explores multimodal strategies used to gain and sustain attention, deployed by Arrernte and Warlpiri adults and children. We examine engagement between adult caregivers and young children in a task centred around storytelling from a picture-book prompt and free-play activities with toys. We show how engagement is attained and sustained multimodally through combinations of speech and action. Adult participants used the task stimuli as a springboard to highlight and reinforce familiar aspects of the lifeworlds of the children–for example, the centrality of kin relationships. In the research task children reciprocate and respond in different ways–they imitate the embodied actions of the adults, repeat spoken utterances, and make requests for on-going participation.Firstly, we express our gratitude to Barb Kelly, who was an inspirational mentor, friend, and, for one of us (Jennifer Green) a PhD supervisor. Her pioneering work at the cutting edges of research on gesture and multimodal communication and on child language acquisition sets an example that is hard to follow. We miss her humour and optimism, her strength and her critical insights. This paper develops ideas that were presented in a symposium held in honour of Barb at the University of Melbourne, 27 October 2023. Funding for this project was provided by the Australian Research Council #FT190100243 and Australian National University Futures Scheme award. We also acknowledge the ARC project Body, Language and Socialization across Cultures that Barb played a pivotal role in formulating (#DP2201100971). We thank the families involved, and Tangentyere Council Community Centres for assistance with working with families. We thank Natalie Parker for coding (ANU Summer Research Scholar 2022\u20132023), Joshua Roberts for data collection, Batchelor Institute and Charles Darwin University for in-kind support, and Coolamon Creative for the illustrations. We also thank the editors of this special edition and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Australian Research Council grant FT190100243. See: https://little-kids-learning-languages.net/ .26enPublisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.AboriginalacquisitionAustralian languageschildreninteractionMultimodal202510.1080/07268602.2025.2514175105012985022