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Learning to talk and gesture about motion in French

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, marianne.gullberg{at}mpi.nl

Henriëtte Hendriks

Cambridge University

Maya Hickmann

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique & Université de Paris 8

This study explores how French adults and children aged four and six years talk and gesture about voluntary motion, examining (1) how they encode path and manner in speech, (2) how they encode this information in accompanying gestures; and (3) whether gestures are co-expressive with speech or express other information. When path and manner are equally relevant, children's and adults' speech and gestures both focus on path, rather than on manner. Moreover, gestures are predominantly co-expressive with speech at all ages. However, when they are non-redundant, adults tend to gesture about path while talking about manner, whereas children gesture about both path and manner while talking about path. The discussion highlights implications for our understanding of speakers' representations and their development.

Key Words: French • gestures • language development • manner • path • representation of motion

First Language, Vol. 28, No. 2, 200-236 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0142723707088074


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