Young children's coordination of gestural and linguistic reference

Abstract

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.

The development of referential choice in English and Japanese: a discourse-pragmatic perspective

“…O'Neill & Topolovec, 2001 ;Tomasello, Anselmi & Farrar, 1985 ;Wilcox & Howse, 1982). Our non-linguistic pragmatic hypothesis that a non-linguistic pragmatic strategy is used when non-lexical forms are used in reference to new information was supported with respect to the English-speaking children and mothers.…”

“…It is possible that both the Japanese-speaking mothers and children might have omitted new arguments when they represented referents that were present in the situational context and were accompanied by deictic gestures, such as pointing or touching to indicate intended referents in discourse. A study by Tomasello, Anselmi & Farrar (1985) with English-speaking children (ranging in age from 1 ;8 to 3;8) showed that the children tended to use gestures more often when using a pronominal form than when using a lexical form in response to an adult's query for clarification, indicating that they were sensitive to the lower specificity and informational value of pronominal arguments. If a lexical form is not used, then an alternate referential strategy would need to be employed, such as the use of a non-linguistic pragmatic strategy, in order for the speaker to adequately point out the new referent to the listener.…”

“…Tomasello, Anselmi & Farrar, 1985 ;Wilcox & Howse, 1982), we hypothesized that at earlier stages of language development both Japanese-speaking and Englishspeaking children would use a non-linguistic referential strategy, such as pointing or eye gaze, to indicate intended referents if they used non-lexical forms in reference to new information (non-linguistic pragmatic hypothesis). A particular question of interest was whether both Englishspeaking and Japanese-speaking children would show evidence of sensitivity to language-universal discourse-pragmatic principles from early stages if non-linguistic information as well as linguistic referential forms were considered.…”

How Toddlers and Preschoolers Learn to Uniquely Identify Referents for Others: A Training Study

“…The above‐reviewed studies have focused on children aged 4 and older, so we do not know whether 2‐year‐olds, for example, would also benefit from feedback. There is now ample evidence that children repair their failed communicative attempts even at the preverbal stage (Golinkoff, 1986, 1993; Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello, in press; Tomasello, Carpenter, & Liszkowski, in press) and often respond to clarification requests in an appropriate manner by the age of 2 (Anselmi, Tomasello, & Acunzo, 1986; Gallagher, 1977; Tomasello, Anselmi, & Farrar, 1984/1985). However, it is not clear that children this young are able to infer from the fact that someone has asked for clarification that their original attempt at reference was not sufficiently informative (as opposed, e.g., to not being heard).…”

Editorial Introduction

“…Elicitation tests are notoriously difficult to conduct with children this young but Garton's well-chosen methodology enables her to show that while at three years children certainly do produce these terms, knowledge of their contrastive functions is still developing. Other recent work (Tomasello, Anselmi & Farrar 1984/1985 has shown that by the third year children are aware of important relationships between gestures and language, and are sensitive to the lack of specificity of pronouns. Garton illustrates some of the implications of the integration of gesture and language for the early use of deictic terms, and she discusses this with attention to semantic, pragmatic and cognitive factors bearing on spatial reference in the preschooler.…”