Publications

Publication details [#59144]

Gentner, Dedre, Susan Goldin-Meadow and Seyda Ozçaliskan. 2014. Do iconic gestures pave the way for children's early verbs? Applied Psycholinguistics 35 (6) : 1143–1162.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
Cambridge University Press

Annotation

Although iconic gestures transferring action meanings come after, rather than forego, children's first verbs, their frequency accrued at the same time as verbs did and, at that time, started to carry meanings not yet voiced in speech. This points out that children can apply gesture to enlarge their collection of action meanings, yet only after they have embarked on learning the verb system underpinning their language.