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Learning to talk in a gesture-rich world: Early communication in Italian vs. American children

Jana M. Iverson

University of Pittsburgh, jiverson{at}pitt.edu

Olga Capirci

Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies, Italian National Research Council

Virginia Volterra

rch Council Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies, Italian National Research Council

Susan Goldin-Meadow

University of Chicago

Italian children are immersed in a gesture-rich culture. Given the large gesture repertoire of Italian adults, young Italian children might be expected to develop a larger inventory of gestures than American children. If so, do these gestures impact the course of language learning? We examined gesture and speech production in Italian and US children between the onset of first words and the onset of two-word combinations. We found differences in the size of the gesture repertoires produced by the Italian vs. the American children, differences that were inversely related to the size of the children's spoken vocabularies. Despite these differences in gesture vocabulary, in both cultures we found that gesture + speech combinations reliably predicted the onset of two-word combinations, underscoring the robustness of gesture as a harbinger of linguistic development.

Key Words: Early communication • gesture and culture • gesture in Italian • gesture-word combinations • two-word speech

First Language, Vol. 28, No. 2, 164-181 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0142723707087736
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