While it is well known that there is a lot of variability in L2, researchers rarely measure the variability in L1 to predict the variability in L2. In this study we tested two explanations of the rate of gestures used in telling a story in L2: (1) a story-telling style underlying both L1 and L2 and (2) proficiency/fluency in L2. Hindi-English bilingual adults performed a story-telling task in their two languages. There was some support for the second predictor: the participants used more gestures in L2 than L1, consistent with gesturing to aid in accessing language. However, the results were strongly supportive of a story-telling style underlying both languages: the individual differences in gesture rate (along with the story length and the vocabulary variability) were highly correlated across languages but not correlated with L2 proficiency/fluency. These results illustrate the importance of studying L1 variability as an important predictor of L2 gesture use.

Individuals differ in how frequently they gesture. It is not clear whether gesture frequency is related to culture, since varied results have been reported. The purpose of this study was to test whether the frequency of representational gestures is linked with story-telling style. Previous research showed individual and cross-cultural differences in story-telling style, some preferring to tell a chronicle (how it happened) or an evaluative story (why it happened). We hypothesized that high gesture frequency might be strongly associated with using a chronicle style, since both rely on visuospatial imagery. Four groups of bilinguals, English as their second language (L2) participated. Their first language (L1) was one of: Mandarin, Hindi, French, or Spanish. Participants watched a cartoon and told the story, once in English, once in L1. The results showed group differences in the rate of gesture use: the Chinese and Hindi L1 participants gestured less frequently than the French and Spanish L1 participants. The participants from Asian cultures were more likely to tell an evaluative story and the Romance-language L1 participants a chronicle. We conclude that these culture/language groups differ in story-telling style. A chronicle style is associated with more gesture production than an evaluative style.

Preschool children who attempt novel NV-ercompounds (likecat brusher) often misorder the noun and the verb, arguably based on sentential phrasal ordering (e.g., Clark, Hecht, & Mulford, 1986). In this study, we test this argument by replicating Clark’s prediction that children’s attempts will fall into predictable stages based on age and by comparing children’s production of NV-ercompounds with another construction that violates sentential phrasal ordering: Verb-ingNoun phrases. Our studies show that we could not replicate the stages described by Clark and that children were more likely to produce Verb-ingNoun constructions in the target order than NV-er. However, the children’s constructions showed a contingency between the order of the elements and the children’s choice of morpheme, suggesting that they were often aiming for the target form. These results suggest that children do not misorder nouns and verbs in NV-ercompounds because of phrasal ordering. We discuss possible alternatives for why NV-ercompounds are difficult for preschool children.

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