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Page 1: Why do bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals?

Why do bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals?

Elena Nicoladis

University of Alberta

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

• SSHRC• NSERC

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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

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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)

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Why gesture?• For the listener and the speaker:

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

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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?

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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”

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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

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%Reversals

Nicoladis, 2006

“the card white” “la blanche carte”

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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

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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)

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Bilinguals’ gestures

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

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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

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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

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Study 1

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

• Prediction: bilinguals > monolinguals

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Gesture Rate in English

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

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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

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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?

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Word use

(Nicoladis, Pika, & Marentette, in press)

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Iconic gesture rate

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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

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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

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Study 3

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

• English monolinguals (in Alberta)

• Chinese monolinguals (in China)

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Gesture rate

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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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)

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Results: Gesture rate

• The children gestured very rarely

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

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Results

(Yan & Nicoladis, in press)

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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

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Summary, con’t

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

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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

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Thank you…

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Gesture rate

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French Spanish English% G

estu

res p

er

word

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Number of gestures

0

5

10

15

20

French Spanish English

# G

estu

res

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Correlations between age/word types and gesture

rate

French Spanish English

Age .410** .260 .097

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