Pre-Linguistic Schemas

## Description

* Around age one, children start to use consistent vocalizations in specific contexts (Carter, 1978, 1979) (Clark, Eve. 2003:105)
	+ “Pre linguistic schemas”: relevant gesture, vocalization-types, and communication goals
	+ Later replaced as versions of various conversational words as the child gradually comes to use recognizable words in the communicative episodes.
		- Table 5.1 is awesome
	+ “First meaningful vocalizations” (Vihman, 1996:130)
	+ Fei Yen in her play pen.
* Towards the end of their first year, kids begin to use two broad classes of gestures: (Clark, Eve. 2009)
	+ Pointing: typically try to direct the attention of others; mark ‘indicate’.
	+ Reaching: indicate things they want; request (often open-handed or with an opening-closing hand)
* More recent studies of infants’ early communicative gestures have considered them as meaningful acts of communication (Capirci et al 2005) (Clark, Eve. 2009)
* Follow a clearly demarcated path in their use of gestures (Clark, Eve. 2009)
	+ 7-8 months – begin to show objects to adults and take part in games of exchange by giving and taking back
	+ 9 months – make use of open handed reaching, sometimes accompanied by opening and closing of the hand
	+ 10-14 months – better-defined gestures of pointing (generally with distinct extension of the index finger) showing or display, and giving along with a steady increase in the tendency to vocalize along with the gesture
* \*deictic?
* Casadio & Caselli 1989: diary observations
* Some children rely on a number of representational gestures alongside their uses of deictic gestures for establishing the locus of attention (Clark, Eve. 2009)
	+ Used to refer to objects and events just as words refer
	+ 10 months – deictic or pointing gestures emerged, at times accompanied by vocalization (the gesture more or less unchanged)
	+ 12 months: referential gestures (earliest all produced with consistency by age one). Emerge from early interactional routines through gradual separation from specific contexts (\*I kinda get what this means but I kinda don’t; like changing diapers at different times, kinda thing?)
	+ 13 months: referential gestures combined with a deictic point as requests
	+ Early months of the second year: reliance on referential or representational gestures alongside deictic gestures and early word use (widespread among children, tho the number of representational gestures varies considerably) (Casadio & Caselli, 1994)
	+ 1;2-1;3 – emergence of representational gestures (Goodwyn & Acredolo 1993)
	+ Goodwyn & Acredolo suggest the relationship between the gesture and the entity designated might provide some support in memory for children at a stage when the demands of setting up a symbolic representational system in the form of words were still rather heavy
* \*non word : word: nonword = a word that isn’t a word in the target language or is it a word with no meaning behind it?
* For children who use representational gestures during the interest stages of acquisition, the meanings of their gestures seems to complement the meanings of their first words. At this stage, representational gestures and words appear to form a single lexicon (Clark, Eve. 2009)
	+ \*deaf children sign naturally-is this why?
	+ Children do not use a gesture where they could already produce a word (\*mama, for instance?)
* As two year olds get older – replaced representational gestures with words (Clark, Eve. 2009)
	+ (\*I guess Deaf children don’t?)
* When they were taught either gestures or words in reference to novel objects… (Namy & Waxman, 1998, 2000) (Clark, Eve. 2009)
	+ 1;6 – respond as if gestures and words can serve equally well to refer to instances of object categories (\*check this)
	+ 2;2 – readily interpret new words, but no new gestures (with additional teaching & practice, they would still treat them as symbolic, but not in the spontaneous way the younger children did.
		- By age 2, appear to have developed an appreciation for words as symbols. This may play a role in their increasingly rapid acquisition of words for talking about their surroundings (also, Preissle & Corey 2004)
* Emergence of directives (Halliday, 1975) (Stilwell-Peccei, 2006:31 (e44))
	+ 0;9 – 1;3 – prelinguistic directives. Nigel: nananana @ medium pitch + pointing = give me that

## Prompt

Fei Yen in her play pen (merge with the Shaolin, Horizons launch sequence?)