Why do bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals?

Elena Nicoladis

University of Alberta

Thanks to…• Simone Pika• Paula Marentette• Natasha Tuck• Carrie Jansen• Nathalie Savoie• Samuel Navarro• Stephanie Yan• Lin Ko• Geoff Hollis

• SSHRC• NSERC

Gesture and speech

• People gesture while speaking

• Gestures often:– Complement the meaning of speech– Occur close in time to speech

– McNeill (1992)

• Speech-gesture system

Why gesture?• For the listener:

– Gesture makes the speech easier for the listener to decipher

– Gestures occur with low frequency word combinations (Beattie & Shovelton, 2000)

• For the speaker:– Gesture helps package info for speaking

• Lexical access, choosing word combos (Kita, 2000)

– People gesture when in TOT state; resolve more TOTs when moving hands (Frick-Horbury & Guttentag, 1998)

Why gesture?• For the listener and the speaker:

– Gesture might serve as many functions as speech itself (Goldin-Meadow, 2003)

Bilinguals: language access difficult

• Many studies have shown that access language for speech production is more difficult for bilinguals than monolinguals– E.g. more TOTs (Gollan & Acenas, 2004)– Due to competition between languages or

less frequent usage?

One example: cross-linguistic transfer

• Cross-linguistic transfer refers to influence of one language on the other

• Observed in simultaneous bilingual children, adult bilinguals of all stripes

• Phonology, morphology, syntax (lexicon?, pragmatics?)

• E.g., “the hat of my brother”

Adjective-Noun strings

• In English, adjectives usually go before nouns (e.g., the white card)

• In French, adjectives usually go after nouns (e.g., la carte blanche)

• French-English bilingual children (3-5 years) might make more adjective-noun reversals than monolinguals

%Reversals

Nicoladis, 2006

“the card white” “la blanche carte”

Cross-linguistic transfer

• Likely due to competition between languages for the purposes of speech production

• N.b. Transfer ≠ confusion– Recall that most of their productions are

correct

Other studies with “interference”

• Other studies (lexical access) have noted cross-linguistic interference, usually with sequential bilinguals:– From L1 onto L2 (all levels of proficiency)– From L2 onto L1 (at least with advanced

L2)

Bilinguals’ gestures

• To the extent that gestures are related to accessing language for speaking:– Bilinguals > monolinguals– Gesture rate might be related to proficiency

Methodology: Gesture studies

• Participants watched a Pink Panther cartoon (two segments)

• Told the story back to a native speaker of the relevant language

• Bilinguals do this twice: once in each language– Counterbalanced, sessions on different

days

Methods, con’t

• Gesture coding– Iconic: resemble referent– Deictic: pointing– Conventional: used within a cultural group

• Gesture rate– Number of gestures divided by word

tokens used to tell the story

Study 1

• English monolinguals vs. English-Spanish bilinguals vs. French-English bilinguals– Adults– Late bilinguals– Highly proficient L2

• Prediction: bilinguals > monolinguals

Gesture Rate in English

(Nicoladis, Pika, Yin, & Marentette, 2007)

Results/Discussion

• The adult bilinguals gestured more in English than monolinguals– Even English-Spanish bilinguals

• Consistent with:– Transfer from high-gesture language– Bilinguals > monolinguals

• Need Spanish or French monolinguals

Study 2

• French-English bilingual preschoolers– Simultaneous bilinguals

• English monolinguals (in Alberta)

• French monolinguals (in Quebec)

• Prediction: bilinguals > monolinguals– Q: is French a high-gesture language?

Word use

(Nicoladis, Pika, & Marentette, in press)

Iconic gesture rate

Results

• The French-English bilinguals gestured more than either English or French monolinguals

• There was no difference in the gesture rate between English and French monolinguals

Discussion• Inconsistent with transfer from high-gesture

language • Consistent with bilinguals > monolinguals• Implication that gesture might be successful

in helping with language access– Bilinguals used as many words (types and tokens)

to tell the story as monolinguals

Study 3

• Intermediate Chinese-English bilingual adults– Late L2 learners– Intermediate English spoken proficiency

• English monolinguals (in Alberta)

• Chinese monolinguals (in China)

Gesture rate

Nicoladis, Marentette, Yin, & Pika, in prep.

Results/Discussion

• Intermediate bilinguals > monolinguals in L2 only

• Bilinguals = monolinguals in L1

• Consistent with other studies reporting that L2 acquisition little interference with L1 in early and intermediate stages but interference with advanced L2

Summary of gesture results

• Highly proficient bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals in both languages

• Intermediate bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals in L2 but not L1

• Corresponding to the pattern of cross-linguistic interference observed in other studies of speech production

Why do bilinguals gesture more?

• Two possibilities:– Lexical access (Krauss, 1998)

– Lexical access and word combinations (Kita, 2000)

• This study:– Tested hypothesis that bilinguals gesture

more because of competing lexical access

Rationale of study

• Preschool bilingual children gesture more than monolinguals

• Bilingual adults show more TOTs than monolinguals (Gollan & Ascenas, 2004)

• Monolingual adults recover more TOTs when gesturing (Frick-Horbury & Guttentag, 1999)

Predictions for TOT study

• Bilingual children will:– Gesture more than monolinguals– Experience more TOTs than monolinguals

• When TOT rate is controlled for, no difference between monolinguals and bilinguals on gesture rate

Methods

• Participants– 20 French-English bilinguals (7-10 years)– 20 age-matched English monolinguals

• Asked them to name 50 pictures (from Faust & Dimitrovsky, 1997)

– e.g., scarecrow, screwdriver, weather vane

• Videotaped to code for gestures

Methods, con’t• Tested their comprehension of test items

afterwards– Forced-choice (4 choices)

• Two measures of TOT– Explicit report of TOT (TOT)– Correctly identified later (CIL)

• Rate of TOT/CIL– Out of total number not named immediately (Gollan

& Brown, 2005)

Results: Gesture rate

• The children gestured very rarely

• There were no differences in the rate of gesturing between monolinguals and bilinguals

Results

(Yan & Nicoladis, in press)

Summary• Bilingual children experience more

TOTs than monolinguals of the same age– N.b. Cannot be accounted for by

comprehension vocabulary differences

• We think the differences between French and English are due to French being in contact with English

Summary, con’t

• This measure of lexical access in this population did not account for differences between bilinguals and monolinguals on gesture rate

So, why do bilinguals gesture more?

• We’re leaning towards:– Bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals

because they have more choices in how they put words together

– And not lexical access alone• Though we do not have enough evidence to

rule it out completely

Thank you…

Gesture rate

01234567

French Spanish English% G

estu

res p

er

word

Number of gestures

0

5

10

15

20

French Spanish English

# G

estu

res

Correlations between age/word types and gesture

rate

French Spanish English

Age .410** .260 .097

Word types .562** .574** .424**