On the Way to Language: Event Segmentation in Homesign and Gesture

Overview

Journal J Child Lang

Specialty Pediatrics

Date 2014 Mar 22

PMID 24650738

Citations 6

Authors

Asli Ozyurek

Reyhan Furman

Susan Goldin-Meadow

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

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.

Citing Articles

Simultaneous structures in sign languages: Acquisition and emergence.

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Simultaneity as an Emergent Property of Efficient Communication in Language: A Comparison of Silent Gesture and Sign Language.

Slonimska A, Ozyurek A, Capirci O Cogn Sci. 2022; 46(5):e13133.

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The Development of Causal Structure without a Language Model.

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Forging a morphological system out of two dimensions: Agentivity and number.

Horton L, Goldin-Meadow S, Coppola M, Senghas A, Brentari D Open Linguist. 2016; 1(1):596-613.

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Does language shape silent gesture?.

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