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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. 101–136

The impact of language on gesture in descriptions of voluntary motion in Czech and French adults and children

| Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès | CNRS
| Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès | CNRS

The present study compares adults, five- and ten-year-old speakers of Czech (a satellite-framed language) and French (a verb-framed language) during the task of describing short animated videos displaying various voluntary motion events. In this research domain, Czech is a hitherto unexplored language whose specifics make it interestingly different from other typologically similar languages. Our focus is on the semantic level of the multimodal expression of motion. We found that in spite of substantial differences in their typical verbal patterns due to the particularities of their respective languages, French speakers and Czech speakers tend to produce the same gestural patterns. Although this phenomenon was observed in all age groups, a cross-language positive effect of age on semantic density of speech as well as gesture was also found. These results are discussed in light of models of multimodal development in language acquisition.

Keywords: motion, gesture, speech, language, Czech, French, development
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background and emerging ideas for our study
    • 2.1Motion across languages
    • 2.2Characteristics of Czech with respect to the manner-saliency continuum
    • 2.3Speech and Gesture
    • 2.4Language effect
    • 2.5Age effect
  • 3.The present study
    • 3.1Design and hypotheses
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Materials
    • 3.4Procedure
    • 3.5Coding
      • 3.5.1Coding of Speech
      • 3.5.2Coding of Gesture
      • 3.5.3Coding of the Gesture-Speech Relation
    • 3.6Results
      • 3.6.1Results for Speech
      • 3.6.2Results for Gesture
      • 3.6.3Results for the Gesture-Speech Relation
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Impact of language and age on speech
    • 4.2Impact of Language and Age on Gesture
    • 4.3Impact of Language and Age on the Gesture-Speech Relation
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.15024.fib
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