Turkish- and English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture

Özlem Ece Demir; Wing-Chee So; Aslı Özyürek; Susan Goldin-Meadow

doi:10.1080/01690965.2011.589273

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Turkish- and English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture

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Turkish- and English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture

Özlem Ece Demir, Wing-Chee So, Aslı Özyürek and Susan Goldin-Meadow

Language and cognitive processes, Vol.27(6), pp.844-867

07/01/2012

DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2011.589273

PMID: 22904588

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http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0011-25DB-FView

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Abstract

Speakers choose a particular expression based on many factors, including availability of the referent in the perceptual context. We examined whether, when expressing referents, monolingual English- and Turkish-speaking children: (1) are sensitive to perceptual context, (2) express this sensitivity in language-specific ways, and (3) use co-speech gestures to specify referents that are underspecified. We also explored the mechanisms underlying children's sensitivity to perceptual context. Children described short vignettes to an experimenter under two conditions: The characters in the vignettes were present in the perceptual context (perceptual context); the characters were absent (no perceptual context). Children routinely used nouns in the no perceptual context condition, but shifted to pronouns (English-speaking children) or omitted arguments (Turkish-speaking children) in the perceptual context condition. Turkish-speaking children used underspecified referents more frequently than English-speaking children in the perceptual context condition; however, they compensated for the difference by using gesture to specify the forms. Gesture thus gives children learning structurally different languages a way to achieve comparable levels of specification while at the same time adhering to the referential expressions dictated by their language.

Language development

Discourse

Referring expressions

Gesture

Details

Title: Subtitle: Turkish- and English-speaking children display sensitivity to perceptual context in the referring expressions they produce in speech and gesture
Creators: Özlem Ece Demir - Department of Psychology , University of Chicago
Wing-Chee So - Department of Psychology , National University of Singapore
Aslı Özyürek - Department of Psychology , Koç University
Susan Goldin-Meadow - Department of Psychology , University of Chicago
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Language and cognitive processes, Vol.27(6), pp.844-867
DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2011.589273
PMID: 22904588
NLM abbreviation: Lang Cogn Process
ISSN: 0169-0965
eISSN: 1464-0732
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Language: English
Date published: 07/01/2012
Academic Unit: Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Center for Social Science Innovation
Record Identifier: 9984002368302771

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