Abstract :
Young children produce gestures to disambiguate arguments. This study explores whether the gestures
they produce are constrained by discourse-pragmatic principles: person and information status. We
ask whether children use gesture more often to indicate the referents that have to be specified (i.e.,
third person and new referents) than the referents that do not have to be specified (i.e., first or second
person and given referents). Chinese- and English-speaking children were videotaped while interacting
spontaneously with adults, and their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. We
found that both groups of children tended to use nouns when indicating third person and new referents
but pronouns or null arguments when indicating first or second person and given referents. They also
produced gestures more often when indicating third person and new referents, particularly when those
referentswere ambiguously conveyed by less explicit referring expressions (pronouns, null arguments).
Thus Chinese- and English-speaking children show sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles not
only in speech but also in gesture.
