Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T09:04:03.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A cross-linguistic study of the development of gesture and speech in Zulu and French oral narratives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2016

RAMONA KUNENE NICOLAS ,
MICHÈLE GUIDETTI  and
JEAN-MARC COLLETTA
RAMONA KUNENE NICOLAS*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
MICHÈLE GUIDETTI
Affiliation:
Octogone Lab, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France
JEAN-MARC COLLETTA
Affiliation:
UFR de Sciences du Langage et Laboratoire Lidilem, Université Stendhal, France
*
Address for correspondence: Ramona Kunene Nicolas, Department of Linguistics, University of Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein, 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present study reports on a developmental and cross-linguistic study of oral narratives produced by speakers of Zulu (a Bantu language) and French (a Romance language). Specifically, we focus on oral narrative performance as a bimodal (i.e., linguistic and gestural) behaviour during the late language acquisition phase. We analyzed seventy-two oral narratives produced by L1 Zulu and French adults and primary school children aged between five and ten years old. The data were all collected using a narrative retelling task. The results revealed a strong effect of age on discourse performance, confirming that narrative abilities improve with age, irrespective of language. However, the results also showed cross-linguistic differences. Zulu oral narratives were longer, more detailed, and accompanied by more co-speech gestures than the French narratives. The parallel effect of age and language on gestural behaviour is discussed and highlights the importance of studying oral narratives from a multimodal perspective within a cross-linguistic framework.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 36 - 62
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by grant no. 0178-01 from the ANR (French National Research Agency) project entitled ‘L'acquisition et les troubles du langage au regard de la multimodalité de la communication parlée’. We also wish to acknowledge the generous funding by the National Research Foundation, South Africa under Grant No. 77955.

References

REFERENCES

Alibali, M. W., Kita, S. & Young, A. J. (2000). Gesture and the process of speech production: we think, therefore we gesture. Language and Cognitive Processes 15(6), 593–613.Google Scholar
Allen, S., Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Brown, A., Furman, R., Ishizuka, T. & Fujii, M. (2007). Language-specific and universal influences in children's syntactic packaging of manner and path: a comparison of English, Japanese, and Turkish. Cognition 102, 16–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beattie, G. (2004). Visible thought: the new psychology of body language. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beattie, G. & Shovelton, H. (2002). What properties of talk are associated with the generation of spontaneous iconic hand gestures? British Journal of Social Psychology 41(3), 403–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berman, R. A. (2004). Language development across childhood and adolescence, Vol. 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (2008). The psycholinguistics of developing text construction. Journal of Child Language 35(4), 735–71.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: a crosslinguistic developmental study, Vol. 1. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brookes, H. J. (2001). O clever ‘He's streetwise.’ When gestures become quotable: the case of the clever gesture. Gesture 1(2), 167–84.Google Scholar
Brookes, H. J. (2004). A repertoire of South African quotable gestures. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14, 186–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry 18(1), 1–21.Google Scholar
Calbris, G. (2011). Elements of meaning in gestures. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Capirci, O., Iverson, J. M., Pizzuto, E. & Volterra, V. (1996). Gestures and words during the transition to two-word speech. Journal of Child Language 23, 645–74.Google Scholar
Carmiol, A. M. & Sparks, A. (2014). Narrative development across cultural contexts. finding the pragmatic in parent–child reminiscing. In Matthews, D. (ed.), Pragmatic development in first language acquisition: trends in language acquisition research, 279–94. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Colletta, J.-M. (2004). Le développement de la parole chez l'enfant âgé de 6 à 11 ans: corps, langage et cognition. Bruxelles: Editions Mardaga.Google Scholar
Colletta, J.-M., Guidetti, M., Capirci, O., Cristilli, C., Demir, E., Kunene Nicolas, R. & Levine, S. (2015). Effects of age and language on co-speech gesture production: an investigation of French, American, and Italian children's narratives. Journal of Child Language 42(1), 122–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colletta, J.-M., Kunene, R., Venouil, A., Kaufmann, V. & Simon, J.-P. (2009). Multi-track annotation of child language and gestures. In Kipp, M., Martin, J.-C., Paggio, P. & Heylen, D. (eds), Multimodal corpora: from models of natural interactions to systems and applications, 54–72 (LNAI 5509). Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Colletta, J.-M., Pellenq, C. & Guidetti, M. (2010). Age-related changes in co-speech gesture and narrative: evidence from French children and adults. Speech Communication 52(6), 565–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cristilli, C., Capirci, O. & Graziano, M. (2010). Le funzioni anaforiche della gestualità nel racconto dei bambini. In La comunicazione parlata, Vol. 3, (307–339). Napoli: Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (1992). Accessing functional categories in Sesotho: interactions at the morpho-syntax interface. In Meisel, J. (ed.), The acquisition of verb placement: functional categories and V2 phenomena in language development, 83–107. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
De Ruiter, J. P. (2007). Postcards from the mind: the relationship between speech, imagistic gesture, and thought. Gesture 7(1), 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P. & Friesen, W. V. (1969). The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica 1(1), 49–98.Google Scholar
Fayol, M. (1997). Des idées au texte: psychologie cognitive de la production verbale, orale et écrite. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Frier, C. (2006). «Au lit petit monstre»: manière de lire et aspects interactionnels des rituels familiaux des lectures partagées. In Frier, C., Grossmann, F. & Pons, M. (eds), Passeurs de lecture: lire ensemble de la maison et de l'école, 44–69. Paris: Retz.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Butcher, C. (2003). Pointing toward two-word speech in young children. In Kita, S. (ed.), Pointing: where language, culture, and cognition meet, 85–107. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Graziano, M. (2009). Le développement de la relation entre les compétences verbale et gestuelle dans la construction d'un texte narratif chez l'enfant âgé de 4 à 10 ans. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université Stendhal.Google Scholar
Groenewald, H. (2003). Zulu oral art. Oral Tradition 18(1), 87–90.Google Scholar
Grossmann, F. & Grossman, F. (1996). Enfances de la lecture: manières de faire, manières de lire à l'école maternelle. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Guidetti, M. (2002). The emergence of pragmatics: forms and functions of conventional gestures in young French children. First Language 22(3), 265–85.Google Scholar
Guidetti, M. (2005). Yes or no? How young French children combine gestures and speech to agree and refuse. Journal of Child Language 32(4), 911–24.Google Scholar
Guidetti, M., Fibigerova, K. & Colletta, J. C. (2014). Gesture and multimodal development. In Seyfeddinipur, M. & Gullberg, M. (eds), From gesture in conversation to visible action as utterance, 351–70. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gullberg, M. & Narasimhan, B. (2010). What gestures reveal about the development of semantic distinctions in Dutch children's placement verbs. Cognitive Linguistics 21(2), 239–62.Google Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gxilishe, S. (2008). African languages, linguistics and child speech and speech pathology –the connection. Per Linguam: A Journal of Language Learning: Tydskrif vir Taalaanleer 24(2), 75–87.Google Scholar
Hadley, P. A. & Schuele, C. M. (1998). Facilitating peer interaction: socially relevant objectives for preschool language intervention. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 7(4), 25–36.Google Scholar
Hendriks, H (2005). Culture-specific language styles: the development of oral narrative and literacy. Journal of Child Language 32, 241–7.Google Scholar
Hickmann, M. (2003). Children's discourse: person, space and time across languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. Sociolinguistics, 269–293.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1985). Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes 1(1), 61–85.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (1980). Gesticulation and speech: two aspects of the process of utterance. In Key, M.R. (Ed), The relationship of verbal and non-verbal communication, 207–27. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (1995). Gestures as illocutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 23(3), 247–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kita, S. (2009). Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gestures: a review. Language and Cognitive Processes 24(2), 145–67.Google Scholar
Kita, S. & Özyürek, A. (2003). What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking. Journal of Memory and Language 48(1), 16–32.Google Scholar
Kita, S. & Özyürek, A. (2007). How does spoken language shape iconic gestures? Gesture and the dynamic dimension of language. In Duncan, S. D., Cassell, J. & Levy, E. T. (Eds), Essays in honor of David McNeill, 67–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Krauss, R. M., Chen, Y. & Chawla, P. (1996). Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication: What do conversational hand gestures tell us? In Zanna, M. (ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, 389–450 San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kunene, R. N. (2010). A comparative study of the development of multimodal narratives in French and Zulu children and adults. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université Stendhal.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1978). Where does the linguistic variable stop? A response to Beatriz Lavandera. Working Papers in Sociolinguistics 48, 1–16.Google Scholar
Laforest, M. (1996). De la manière d’écouter les histoires: la part du narrataire. Autour de la narration. Québec: Nuit Blanche Éditeur 73–95.Google Scholar
Loehr, D. P. (2004). Gesture and intonation. Georgetown: Georgetown University.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: what gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (2000). Language and gesture, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, D. (2012). How language began: gesture and speech in human evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, D. (2014) Gesture–speech unity: phylogenesis, ontogenesis and microgenesis. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 5(2), 137–84.Google Scholar
Moonsamy, S., Jordaan, H. & Greenop, K. (2009). Cognitive processing and narrative discourse production in children with ADHD. South African Journal of Psychology 39(3), 326–35.Google Scholar
Morris, D. (1994). Bodytalk: a world guide to gestures. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Ninio, A. & Snow, C. E. (1996). Pragmatic development. Oxford: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, C. & McCabe, A. (1991). Linking children's connective use and narrative microstructure. In McCabe, A. & Peterson, C. (eds), Developing narrative structure. (pp. 29–53). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Pretorius, L. & Bosch, S. (2009). Exploiting cross-linguistic similarities in Zulu and Xhosa computational morphology. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Language Technologies for African Languages, 96–103. Association for Computational Linguistics. Online: <http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1564526>.Google Scholar
Ramaila, Z. M. (2005). An investigation of the potential role that folklore can play in environmental education: a case study of Mphoko. Unpublished master's dissertation, University of the Western Cape.Google Scholar
Reig Alamillo, A., Colletta, J.-M. & Guidetti, M. (2013). Gesture and language in narratives and explanations: the effects of age and communicative activity on late multimodal discourse development. Journal of Child Language 40(3), 511–38.Google Scholar
Saville-Troike, M. (1982). The ethnography of communication: an introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Suzman, S. (1991). Language acquisition in Zulu. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand.Google Scholar
Yoshioka, K. (2008). Gesture and information structure in first and second language. Gesture 8(2), 236–255.Google Scholar