Through constant exposure to adult input in interaction, children’s language gradually develops into rich linguistic constructions containing multiple cross-modal elements subtly used together for communicative functions. Sensorimotor schemas provide the "grounding" of language in experience and lead to children’s access to the symbolic function. With the emergence of vocal or signed productions, gestures do not disappear but remain functional and diversify in form and function as children become skilled adult multimodal conversationalists. This volume examines the role of gesture over the human lifespan in its complex interaction with speech and sign. Gesture is explored in the different stages before, during, and after language has fully developed and a special focus is placed on the role of gesture in language learning and cognitive development. Specific chapters are devoted to the use of gesture in atypical populations. CONTENTS Contributors Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-Meadow 1 Introduction to Gesture in Language Part I: An Emblematic Gesture: Pointing Kensy Cooperrider and Kate Mesh 2 Pointing in Gesture and Sign Aliyah Morgenstern 3 Early Pointing Gestures Part II: Gesture Before Speech Meredith L. Rowe, Ran Wei, and Virginia C. Salo 4 Early Gesture Predicts Later Language Development Olga Capirci, Maria Cristina Caselli, and Virginia Volterra 5 Interaction Among Modalities and Within Development Part III: Gesture With Speech During Language Learning Eve V. Clark and Barbara F. Kelly 6 Constructing a System of Communication With Gestures and Words Pauline Beaupoil-Hourdel 7 Embodying Language Complexity: Co-Speech Gestures Between Age 3 and 4 Casey Hall, Elizabeth Wakefield, and Susan Goldin-Meadow 8 Gesture Can Facilitate Children’s Learning and Generalization of Verbs Part IV: Gesture After Speech Is Mastered Jean-Marc Colletta 9 On the Codevelopment of Gesture and Monologic Discourse in Children Susan Wagner Cook 10 Understanding How Gestures Are Produced and Perceived Tilbe Göksun, Demet Özer, and Seda AkbIyık 11 Gesture in the Aging Brain Part V: Gesture With More Than One Language Elena Nicoladis and Lisa Smithson 12 Gesture in Bilingual Language Acquisition Marianne Gullberg 13 Bimodal Convergence: How Languages Interact in Multicompetent Language Users’ Speech and Gestures Gale Stam and Marion Tellier 14 Gesture Helps Second and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-Meadow Afterword: Gesture as Part of Language or Partner to Language Across the Lifespan Index About the Editors
This book brings together papers which address a range of issues regarding the nature and structure of sign languages and other gestural systems, and how they exploit the space in which they are conveyed.
This volume, originally published as a Special Issue of "Gesture" Volume 8:2 (2008), brings together studies from different disciplines that examine language development in children and adults from varying perspectives.
( Browman & Goldstein , 1985 : 35 ) Mowrey and Pagliuca ( 1988 ) propose a model of speech as gesture to account for phonetic evolution . In their model , words are " complexes of muscular gestures which are temporally ordered , but not ...
Landmark study on the role of gestures in relation to speech and thought.
The best survey of cognitive linguistics available, this Handbook provides a thorough explanation of its rich methodology, key results, and interdisciplinary context.
Each of the 21 chapters in this volume reflects a view of language as a dynamic phenomenon with emergent structure, and in each, gesture is approached as part of language, not an adjunct to it.
Jackendoff, R. (2003). Precis of Foundations of language: Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 26(6), 651–665. Janzen, T. (2004). Space rotation, perspective shift, and verb morphology in ASL.
This book demonstrates the vital connection between language and gesture, and why it is critical for research on second language acquisition to take into account the full spectrum of communicative phenomena.
No introductory course in child and language development will be complete without this book.
Gestures are unique because they communicate an individual's moods and desires to the world but operate under different psychological and cognitive constraints than other actions. Thus, the connections between gesture...