Brings together studies from language acquisition and developmental psychology. This title addresses topics such as: gesture use in prelinguistic infants with a focus on pointing, the relationship between gestures and lexical development in typically developing and deaf children and even how gesture can help to learn mathematics

Through constant exposure to adult input in interaction, children’s language gradually develops into rich linguistic constructions containing multiple cross-modal elements subtly used together for communicative functions. Sensorimotor schemas provide the "grounding" of language in experience and lead to children’s access to the symbolic function. With the emergence of vocal or signed productions, gestures do not disappear but remain functional and diversify in form and function as children become skilled adult multimodal conversationalists. This volume examines the role of gesture over the human lifespan in its complex interaction with speech and sign. Gesture is explored in the different stages before, during, and after language has fully developed and a special focus is placed on the role of gesture in language learning and cognitive development. Specific chapters are devoted to the use of gesture in atypical populations. CONTENTS Contributors Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-Meadow 1 Introduction to Gesture in Language Part I: An Emblematic Gesture: Pointing Kensy Cooperrider and Kate Mesh 2 Pointing in Gesture and Sign Aliyah Morgenstern 3 Early Pointing Gestures Part II: Gesture Before Speech Meredith L. Rowe, Ran Wei, and Virginia C. Salo 4 Early Gesture Predicts Later Language Development Olga Capirci, Maria Cristina Caselli, and Virginia Volterra 5 Interaction Among Modalities and Within Development Part III: Gesture With Speech During Language Learning Eve V. Clark and Barbara F. Kelly 6 Constructing a System of Communication With Gestures and Words Pauline Beaupoil-Hourdel 7 Embodying Language Complexity: Co-Speech Gestures Between Age 3 and 4 Casey Hall, Elizabeth Wakefield, and Susan Goldin-Meadow 8 Gesture Can Facilitate Children’s Learning and Generalization of Verbs Part IV: Gesture After Speech Is Mastered Jean-Marc Colletta 9 On the Codevelopment of Gesture and Monologic Discourse in Children Susan Wagner Cook 10 Understanding How Gestures Are Produced and Perceived Tilbe Göksun, Demet Özer, and Seda AkbIyık 11 Gesture in the Aging Brain Part V: Gesture With More Than One Language Elena Nicoladis and Lisa Smithson 12 Gesture in Bilingual Language Acquisition Marianne Gullberg 13 Bimodal Convergence: How Languages Interact in Multicompetent Language Users’ Speech and Gestures Gale Stam and Marion Tellier 14 Gesture Helps Second and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-Meadow Afterword: Gesture as Part of Language or Partner to Language Across the Lifespan Index About the Editors

Sociopragmatics is a rapidly growing field and this is the first ever handbook dedicated to this exciting area of study. Bringing together an international team of leading editors and contributors, it provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview of the key concepts, topics, settings and methodologies involved in sociopragmatic research. The chapters are organised in a systematic fashion, and span a wide range of theoretical research on how language communicates multiple meanings in context, how it influences our daily interactions and relationships with others, and how it helps construct our social worlds. Providing insight into a fascinating array of phenomena and novel research directions, the Handbook is not only relevant to experts of pragmatics but to any reader with an interest in language and its use in different contexts, including researchers in sociology, anthropology and communication, and students of applied linguistics and related areas, as well as professional practitioners in communication research.

Research on the multifaceted aspects of modeling, analysis, and synthesis of - man gesture is receiving growing interest from both the academic and industrial communities. On one hand, recent scienti?c developments on cognition, on - fect/emotion, on multimodal interfaces, and on multimedia have opened new perspectives on the integration of more sophisticated models of gesture in c- putersystems.Ontheotherhand,theconsolidationofnewtechnologiesenabling “disappearing” computers and (multimodal) interfaces to be integrated into the natural environments of users are making it realistic to consider tackling the complex meaning and subtleties of human gesture in multimedia systems, - abling a deeper, user-centered, enhanced physical participation and experience in the human-machine interaction process. The research programs supported by the European Commission and s- eral national institutions and governments individuated in recent years strategic ?elds strictly concerned with gesture research. For example, the DG Infor- tion Society of the European Commission (www.cordis.lu/ist) supports several initiatives, such as the “Disappearing Computer” and “Presence” EU-IST FET (Future and Emerging Technologies), the IST program “Interfaces & Enhanced Audio-Visual Services” (see for example the project MEGA, Multisensory - pressive Gesture Applications, www.megaproject.org), and the IST strategic - jective “Multimodal Interfaces.” Several EC projects and other funded research are represented in the chapters of this book. Awiderangeofapplicationscanbene?tfromadvancesinresearchongesture, from consolidated areas such as surveillance to new or emerging ?elds such as therapy and rehabilitation, home consumer goods, entertainment, and aud- visual, cultural and artistic applications, just to mention only a few of them.

Gestures are prevalent in communication and tightly linked to language and speech. As such they can shed important light on issues of language development across the lifespan. This volume, originally published as a Special Issue of Gesture Volume 8:2 (2008), brings together studies from different disciplines that examine language development in children and adults from varying perspectives. It provides a review of common theoretical and empirical themes, and the contributions address topics such as gesture use in prelinguistic infants, the relationship between gestures and lexical development in typically and atypically developing children and in second language learners, what gestures reveal about discourse, and how all languages that adult second language speakers know can influence each other. The papers exemplify a vibrant new field of study with relevance for multiple disciplines.

Language use is fundamentally multimodal. Speakers use their hands to point to locations, to represent content and to comment on ongoing talk; they position their bodies to show their orientation and stance in interaction; they use facial displays to comment on what is being said; and they engage in mutual gaze to establish intersubjectivity. This volume brings together studies by leading scholars from several fields on gaze and facial displays, on the relationship between gestures, sign, and language, on pointing and other conventionalized forms of manual expression, on gestures and language evolution, and on gestures in child development. The papers in this collection honor Adam Kendon whose pioneering work has laid the theoretical and methodological foundations for contemporary studies of multimodality, gestures, and utterance visible action.

How do children acquire language? How does real life language acquisition differ from results found in controlled environments? And how is modern life challenging established theories? Going far beyond laboratory experiments, the International Handbook of Language Acquisition examines a wide range of topics surrounding language development to shed light on how children acquire language in the real world. The foremost experts in the field cover a variety of issues, from the underlying cognitive processes and role of language input to development of key language dimensions as well as both typical and atypical language development. Horst and Torkildsen balance a theoretical foundation with data acquired from applied settings to offer a truly comprehensive reference book with an international outlook. The International Handbook of Language Acquisition is essential reading for graduate students and researchers in language acquisition across developmental psychology, developmental neuropsychology, linguistics, early childhood education, and communication disorders.