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Prelinguistic vocalizations distinguish pointing acts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

THOMAS GRÜNLOH  and
ULF LISZKOWSKI
THOMAS GRÜNLOH*
Affiliation:
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Dresden, Germany, and Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Netherlands
ULF LISZKOWSKI
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg, Germany, and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Thomas Grünloh, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Saxon Cochlear Implant Center (SCIC), Fetscherstraße 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany; tel: +49(0)351 458 7148; e-mail: Thomas_Gruenloh@gmx.de
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Abstract

The current study investigated whether point-accompanying characteristics, like vocalizations and hand shape, differentiate infants' underlying motives of prelinguistic pointing. We elicited imperative (requestive) and declarative (expressive and informative) pointing acts in experimentally controlled situations, and analyzed accompanying characteristics. Experiment 1 revealed that prosodic characteristics of point-accompanying vocalizations distinguished requestive from both expressive and informative pointing acts, with little differences between the latter two. In addition, requestive points were more often realized with the whole hand than the index finger, while this was the opposite for expressive and informative acts. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1, revealing distinct prosodic characteristics for requestive pointing also when the referent was distal and when it had an index-finger shape. Findings reveal that beyond the social context, point-accompanying vocalizations give clues to infants' underlying intentions when pointing.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 1312 - 1336
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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