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When speech is ambiguous, gesture steps in: Sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles in early childhood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2009

WING CHEE SO ,
ÖZLEM ECE DEMIR  and
SUSAN GOLDIN-MEADOW
WING CHEE SO*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
ÖZLEM ECE DEMIR
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
SUSAN GOLDIN-MEADOW
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Wing Chee So, Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, BLK AS4 9 Arts Link, Singapore. E-mail: psyswc@nus.edu.sg
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Abstract

Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestures they produce are constrained by discourse-pragmatic principles: person and information status. We ask whether children use gesture more often to indicate the referents that have to be specified (i.e., third person and new referents) than the referents that do not have to be specified (i.e., first or second person and given referents). Chinese- and English-speaking children were videotaped while interacting spontaneously with adults, and their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. We found that both groups of children tended to use nouns when indicating third person and new referents but pronouns or null arguments when indicating first or second person and given referents. They also produced gestures more often when indicating third person and new referents, particularly when those referents were ambiguously conveyed by less explicit referring expressions (pronouns, null arguments). Thus Chinese- and English-speaking children show sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles not only in speech but also in gesture.

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Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 209 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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