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Verbal and gestural expression of motion and spatial events / L’expression verbale et gestuelle du mouvement et de l’espace: New evidence from different age groups and linguistic environments / nouveaux arguments en provenance de différents groupes d’âge et de différents environnements linguistiques
Edited by Kateřina Fibigerová, Jean-Marc Colletta and Michèle Guidetti
[Language, Interaction and Acquisition 9:1] 2018
► pp. 22–39

Children’s use of gesture and action with static and dynamic verbs

| Linköping University
| Lund University

The present study investigates the use of gestures by 18-, 24- and 30-month-old Swedish children, as well as their practical actions in coordination with verbs. Previous research on connections between children’s verbs and gestures has mainly focused only on iconic gestures and action verbs. We expand the research foci in two ways: we look both at gestures and at practical actions, examining how the two are coordinated with static verbs (e.g. sleep) and dynamic verbs (e.g. fall). Thanks to these additional distinctions, we have found that iconic gestures and iconic actions (the latter in particular) most commonly occurred with dynamic verbs. Static verbs were most commonly accompanied by deictic actions and deictic gestures (the latter in particular). At 30 months, deictic bodily expressions, including both gestures and actions, increased, whereas iconic expressions decreased. We suggest that this may reflect a transition to less redundant ways of using bodily expressions at 30 months, where bodily movement increasingly takes on the role of specifying verb arguments rather than expressing the semantics of the verb itself.

Keywords: gesture, action, verbs, development, language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Data
    • 2.2Coding
    • 2.3Expected findings
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Do verbs come before the first iconic gestures?
    • 4.2Gestures, verbs, and predication
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.15015.and
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