Sign Language Studies

Winter 1981 GESTURES, SIGNS, & WORDS AT TWO YEARS: WHEN DOES COMMUNICATION BECOME LANGUAGE? Virginia Volterra Introduction. As many researchers have pointed out, gestural communication in hearing children plays a fundamental role in the language acquisition process (e.g. Bates 1976, Bates et al. 1979, Bruner 1975, Lock 1980). Two years ago at the Copenhagen Conference I presented a paper on symbolic development inspoken and gestural modalities. In that paper I stressed the striking similarities in content and sequence of development between words and gestures used by hearing children at one year of age. Here I pursue the same line of investigation further in the time scale, and analyze more precisely the gestural communication of hearing children between one and two years of age. I also compare their gestural communication with the communication of a deaf child of deaf parents exposed to a sign language since birth. The more general question is: Can we find differences between the gestural communication of a child exposed to a sign language and of a child exposed to a spoken language, and if so at what point in the development do the differences occur? The results of this comparison will offer us the opportunity to discuss the role of linguistic input on prelinguistic communication and on language development. 351 @1981 by Linstok Press, Inc. ISSN 0302-1475 33:35 $1.50 SLS 33 Sign Language Studies 33 Method. To examine this question we collected data on the gestural and vocal communication of a hearing child, Luca, observed longitudinally from nine months to two years and three months of age, through diary accounts kept by the child's mother and through videotaped sessions at intervals (Caselli 1981). We also used the same methodology to collect data from two hearing children, Francesca (observed from twenty months to twenty-four months), and Giorgio (from twenty-seven months to thirty months). These two additional children were chosen for this research because they exhibited a gestural communication much richer than their verbal production . They were thus typical of children whose parents would say, "He doesn't speak, but I can understand everything he wants. " To compare with these hearing children, we had just one subject, Massimo, a deaf child of deaf parents, whom we observed from two years to two and one half years of age, using the same methods (diary accounts and periodic videotaping sessions). From the age of two Massimo went to school with hearing children and received special oral training from a speech therapist three hours a week. The data were collected and transcribed by Marilena Belfiore (Massimo's mother), Cristina Caselli (Luca's mother), Teresa Ossella (Massimo's speech therapist), and me. Table 1 shows the subjects, their ages under observation, and the nature of their language input. SUBJECT from to exposure L - Luca 0 ; 9 2 ; 3 (hearing) to spoken language F - Francesca 1 ;8 2; 0 G - Giorgio 2 ;3 2; 6 M - Massimo 2 ; 0 2 ; 6 (deaf) to signed language Table 1. Subjects. Volterra Analysis . These data can be analyzed and discussed from many perspectives (see Caselli et al. 1981). In this paper I will introduce only three major points, which I think are the most relevant for the final discussion: 1. The difference between deitic gestures, especially pointing, and referential gestures, or signs, produced by children from one to two years of age; 2. The form and content of the referential gestures that we have found our subjects using; 3. The different types of combinations of gestures, signs, and words produced by our subjects. It is extremely important to distinguish between deictic gestures and referential gestures or "signs. " We call deictic such gestures as showing, giving , and pointing. These deictic gestures appear when the child is about ten months of age, and at the very beginning they are produced one at a time and often simultaneously with vocal signals. Elsewhere (Bates et al. 1975), we have called these gestures "performative" gestures: they express only the child's communicative intention, to request or to declare; the referential meaning communicated is given entirely by the context in which the communication takes place. We have also described the developmental sequence from showing and giving to...