RSSThe Integration of Prosody and Gesture in Early Intentional Communication
Dec 06
Institution: Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Program: Cognitive Science and Language
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2014
Author: Núria Esteve-Gibert
Dissertation Title: The Integration of Prosody and Gesture in Early Intentional
Communication
Dissertation URL: http://prosodia.upf.edu/home/arxiu/tesis/doctorat/tesi_esteve_gibert.pdf
Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
Phonology
Dissertation Director(s):
Pilar Prieto
Dissertation Abstract:
This dissertation comprises four experimental studies which investigate the
way infants integrate prosody and gesture for intentional communicative
purposes. The first study is a longitudinal analysis of how a group of infants
produce gesture and speech combinations in natural interactions, with results
that show that already at 12 and 15 months of age infants temporally align
prosodic and gesture prominences. The second study uses a habituation/test
procedure to test the infants’ early sensitivity to temporal gesture-prosodic
integration, showing that 9-month-old infants are sensitive to the alignment
between prosodic and gesture prominences. The third study analyzes the
longitudinal productions of four infants at the pre-lexical stage and provides
evidence that infants use prosodic cues such as pitch range and duration to
convey specific intentions like requests, statements, responses, and
expressions of satisfaction or discontent. Finally, the fourth study examines
how infants responded at 12 months of age to different types of
pointing-speech combinations and shows that infants use prosodic and gestural
cues to comprehend communicative intentions behind an attention-directing act.
Altogether, this dissertation shows that the temporal integration of gesture
and speech occurs at the early stages of language and cognitive development,
and that pragmatic uses of prosody and gesture develop before infants master
the use of lexical cues. I further claim that infants’ integration of prosody
and gesture at the temporal and pragmatic levels is a reflex of an early
emergence of language pragmatics.
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