Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T05:37:17.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the way to language: event segmentation in homesign and gesture*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2014

ASLI ÖZYÜREK ,
REYHAN FURMAN  and
SUSAN GOLDIN-MEADOW
ASLI ÖZYÜREK*
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Netherlands
REYHAN FURMAN
Affiliation:
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
SUSAN GOLDIN-MEADOW
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Asli Özyürek, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525JT, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Languages typically express semantic components of motion events such as manner (roll) and path (down) in separate lexical items. We explore how these combinatorial possibilities of language arise by focusing on (i) gestures produced by deaf children who lack access to input from a conventional language (homesign); (ii) gestures produced by hearing adults and children while speaking; and (iii) gestures used by hearing adults without speech when asked to do so in elicited descriptions of motion events with simultaneous manner and path. Homesigners tended to conflate manner and path in one gesture, but also used a mixed form, adding a manner and/or path gesture to the conflated form sequentially. Hearing speakers, with or without speech, used the conflated form, gestured manner, or path, but rarely used the mixed form. Mixed form may serve as an intermediate structure on the way to the discrete and sequenced forms found in natural languages.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 64 - 94
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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 an ERC Starting Grant given to the first author and R01DC00491 from NICHD to the last author. We would like to thank Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey, for logistic support during the project and all the deaf and hearing participants in their cooperation and for welcoming us into their homes. We would also like to thank Professor Shanley Allen and Professor Sotaro Kita for sharing the stimulus materials, the creation of which was supported by an NSF Grant awarded to them and to the first author. Finally, we are grateful to Carolyn Mylander, Tilbe Goksun, Engin Arik, Beyza Sumer, and Burcu Sancar for helping in data collection and coding.

References

REFERENCES

Allen, S., Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Brown, A., Furman, R., Ishizuka, T. & Fujii, M. (2007). Language-specific and universal influences in children's packaging of manner and path: A comparison of English, Japanese, and Turkish. Cognition 102, 16–48.Google Scholar
Bunger, A., Trueswell, J. C. & Papafragou, A. (2012). The relation between event apprehension and utterance formulation in children: Evidence from linguistic omissions. Cognition 122, 135–49.Google Scholar
Choi, S. & Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition 41, 83–121.Google Scholar
Christiansen, M. & Kirby, S. (2003). Language evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Coppola, M. & Newport, E. L. (2005). Grammatical ‘Subjects’ in home sign: Abstract linguistic structure in adult primary gesture systems without linguistic input. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, 19249–53.Google Scholar
Fay, N., Garrod, S., Roberts, L. & Swoboda, N. (2010). The interactive evolution of human communication systems. Cognitive Science 34(3), 351–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feldman, H., Goldin-Meadow, S. & Gleitman, L. (1978). Beyond Herodotus: The creation of language by linguistically deprived deaf children. In Lock, A. (ed.), Action, symbol, and gesture: The emergence of language, 351–414. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Flaherty, M. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). Does input matter? Gesture and homesign in Nicaragua, China, Turkey, and the USA. In Smith, A. D. M., Schouwstra, M., de Boer, B. & Smith, K. (eds), Proceedings of the Eighth Evolution of Language Conference, 403–4. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Franklin, A., Giannakidou, A. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2011). Negation and structure building in a home sign system. Cognition 118(3), 398–416.Google Scholar
Garrod, S. (2007). Foundations of representation: Where might graphical symbol systems come from? Cognitive Science 31(6), 961–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gasser, M. (2004). Origins of arbitrariness in language. In Forbes, K., Gentner, D. & Regier, T. (eds), Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 26, 434–40. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum.Google Scholar
Gershkoff-Stowe, L. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2002). Is there a natural order for expressing semantic relations? Cognitive Psychology 45(3), 375–412.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). Widening the lens on language learning: Language creation in deaf children and adults in Nicaragua. Human Development 53, 235–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., Butcher, C., Mylander, C. & Dodge, M. (1994). Nouns and verbs in a self-styled gesture system: What's in a name? Cognitive Psychology 27, 259–319.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Feldman, H. (1977). The development of language-like communication without a language model. Science 197, 401–3.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., McNeill, D. & Singleton, J. (1996). Silence is liberating: Removing the handcuffs on grammatical expression in the manual modality. Psychological Review 103, 34–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Mylander, C. (1984). Gestural communication in deaf children: The effects and non-effects of parental input on early language development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 49, 1–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., Mylander, C. & Butcher, C. (1995). The resilience of combinatorial structure at the word level: Morphology in self-styled gesture systems. Cognition 56, 195–262.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., Mylander, C. & Franklin, A. (2007). How children make language out of gesture: Morphological structure in gesture systems developed by American and Chinese deaf children. Cognitive Psychology 55, 87–135.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., Namboodiripad, S., Mylander, C., Özyürek, A. & Sancar, B. (in press). How children create language out of gesture: The effect of co-speech gesture on homesign in American and Turkish deaf children. Journal of Cognition and Development.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., So, W.-C., Özyürek, A. & Mylander, C. (2008). The natural order of events: How speakers of different languages represent events nonverbally. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, 9163–8.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Saltzman, J. (2000). The cultural bounds of maternal accommodation: How Chinese and American mothers communicate with deaf and hearing children. Psychological Science 11, 311–8.Google Scholar
Hockett, C. F. (1960). Origins of Speech. Scientific American 203, 88–96.Google Scholar
Hunsicker, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Hierarchical structure in a self-created communication system: Building nominal constituents in homesign. Language 88(4), 732–63.Google Scholar
Iverson, J. M., Capirci, O., Longobardi, E. & Caselli, M. C. (1999). Gesturing in mother–child interactions. Cognitive Development 14, 57–75.Google Scholar
Kegl, J., Senghas, A. & Coppola, M. (1999). Creation through contact: Sign language emergence and sign language change in Nicaragua. In DeGraff, M. (ed.), Language creation and language change: Creolization, diachrony, and development, 179–237). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kendon, A. (1980). Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In Key, M. R. (ed.), Relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication, 207–28. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kita, S., van der Hulst, H. & van Gijn, I. (1998). Movement phases in signs and co-speech gestures, and their transcription human coders. In Wachsmuth, I. & Fröhlich, M. (eds), Gesture and sign language in human–computer interaction: lecture notes in artificial intelligence, 23–35. Berlin: Springer.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, 16–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kita, S., Özyürek, A., Allen, S., Brown, A., Furman, R. & Ishizuka, T. (2007). Relations between syntactic encoding and co-speech gestures: Implications for a model of speech and gesture production. Journal of Language and Cognitive Processes 22, 1212–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meier, R. P. (1987). Elicited imitation of verb agreement in American Sign Language: iconically or morphologically determined? Journal of Memory and Language 26, 362–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newport, E. (1981). Constraints on structure: Evidence from American Sign Language and language learning. In Collins, W. A. (ed.), Aspects of the development of competence: Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, 93–124. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Özçalişkan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture is at the cutting edge of language development. Cognition 96, 101–13.Google Scholar
Özçalişkan, S. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2013). How speaking shapes the native language of gesture in describing motion. Paper presented in the special session on space and directionality in language, Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Özçalişkan, S. & Slobin, D. I. (1999). Learning how to search for the frog: Expression of manner of motion in English, Spanish, and Turkish. In Greenhill, A., Littlefield, H. & Tano, C. (eds), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 541–52. Boston, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Özyürek, A., Kita, S. & Allen, S. (2001). Tomato Man movies: Stimulus kit designed to elicit manner, path and causal constructions in motion events with regard to speech and gestures [Videotape]. Nijmegen, the Netherlands: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Language and Cognition Group.Google Scholar
Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Allen, S., Brown, A., Furman, R. & Ishizuka, T. (2008). Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture: Motion events in English and Turkish. Developmental Psychology 44, 1040–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Özyürek, A., Kita, S., Allen, S., Furman, R. & Brown, A. (2005). How does linguistic framing of events influence co-speech gestures? Insights from cross-linguistic variations and similarities. Gesture 5, 215–37.Google Scholar
Papafragou, A., Massey, C. & Gleitman, L. (2006). When English proposes what Greek presupposes: The cross-linguistic encoding of motion events. Cognition 98, B75–87.Google Scholar
Papafragou, A. & Selimis, S. (2010). Lexical and structural biases in the acquisition of motion verbs. Language Learning and Development 6, 87–115.Google Scholar
Perniss, P., Thompson, R. & Vigliocco, G. (2010). The role of iconicity in signed and spoken languages. Frontiers in Language Sciences 1, E227.Google Scholar
Sandler, W., Meir, I., Padden, C. & Aronoff, M. (2005). The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, 2661–5.Google Scholar
Senghas, A. (2003). Intergenerational influence and ontogenetic development in the emergence of spatial grammar in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Cognitive Development 18, 511–31.Google Scholar
Senghas, A. & Coppola, M. (2001). Children creating language: how Nicaraguan Sign Language acquired a spatial grammar. Psychological Science 12, 323–8.Google Scholar
Senghas, A., Kita, S. & Özyürek, A. (2004). Children creating core properties of language: Evidence from an emerging sign language in Nicaragua. Science 305, 1779–82.Google Scholar
Senghas, A., Özyürek, A. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). Evolution of segmentation and sequencing: Evidence from homesign and Nicaraguan Sign Language. In Smith, A. D. M., Schouwstra, M., de Boer, B. & Smith, K. (eds), Proceedings of the Eighth Evolution of Language Conference, 279–89. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Senghas, A., Özyürek, A. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2013). Homesign as a way-station between co-speech gesture and sign language: The evolution of segmenting and sequencing. In Botha, R. & Everaert, M. (eds), The evolutionary emergence of language: Evidence and inference, 62–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shatz, M. (1982). On mechanisms of language acquisition: Can features of the communicative environment account for development? In Wanner, E. & Gelitman, L. (eds), Language acquisition: The state of the art, 102–27. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shintel, H., Nusbaum, H. C. & Okrent, A. (2006). Analog acoustic expression in speech communication. Journal of Memory and Language 55(2), 167–77.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. & Hoiting, N. (1994). Reference to movement in spoken and signed languages: Typological considerations. Proceedings of the 20th Berkeley Linguistics Society, 487–505. Online: <http://elanguage.net/journals/bls/index>>Google Scholar
Sümer, B., Zwitserlood, I., Perniss, P. & Özyürek, A. (2013). Revisiting modality effects in children's acquisition of spatial language: Insights from Turkish and Turkish Sign Language. Paper presented at Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research Conference, University College London.Google Scholar
Supalla, T. (1982). Structure and acquisition of verbs of motion and location in American Sign Language (Unpublished PhD dissertation). University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Supalla, T. (1990). Serial verbs of motion in ASL. In Fischer, S. & Suple, P. (eds), Theoretical issues in sign language research, Vol. 1: Linguistics, 127–52. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Shopen, T. (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. III: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Theisen, C., Oberlander, J. & Kirby, S. (2010). Systematicity and arbitrariness in novel communication systems. Interaction Studies 11(1), 14–32.Google Scholar
Zheng, M. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2002). Thought before language: How deaf and hearing children express motion events across cultures. Cognition 85, 145–75.Google Scholar