why do bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals? elena nicoladis university of alberta
TRANSCRIPT
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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
01234567
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**