This study examined young children's responses to adult contingent queries. Each of 22 children in Language Stages II–V conversed alone with their mother and alone with an adult experimenter. The adults queried the child's multi-word utterances with either a neutral or a specific query. Children at all stages responded differently to the two types of query. In response to the neutral query children tended to repeat their entire utterance, whereas in response to the specific query they most often replied with only the asked-for information. Some children found it easier to differentiate the query types when their mother was the listener. These findings suggest that very young children can comprehend the linguistic structure of specific queries and that they can make pragmatically appropriate responses.

The current study investigated the relationship between young children's linguistic and nonlinguistic communicative strategies. Twenty-three children, 20-44 months of age, served as subjects. In a naturalistic setting, an adult gave signs of noncomprehension (a contingent query) to each of the child's object references. The child's original linguistic reference and use of gestures were recorded and compared to his/her subsequent linguistic and gestural responses to the adult query. Results showed that the children used gestures more often with pronouns than with nouns: either to clarify a linguistic reference from the original utterance or to supplement a linguistic response to the adult query. This would imply that two-to three-yearold children are aware of the communicative principle that pronouns 'need' gestures more than nouns, and more generally, that they are capable of coordinating their linguistic and nonlinguistic communicative strategies.A variety of researchers have suggested a direct relationship between the prelinguistic use of gestures and early language (e.g., Bates 1976, Bruner 1975, Carter 1978, Clark 1978, Halliday 1975. The nature of this relationship is not clear, however. For example, it may be that early gestures convey meanings that subsequently are expressed by language and the gestures fall into disuse as a consequence: language replaces gestures. Alternatively, it may be that early gestures convey meanings that are different from those expressed by early language and the onset of speech has little or no effect on gestural usage: they both proceed independently. Finally, it may be that early language and gestures are coordinated at some point to form a single communication system more powerful than either alone.