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In:Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across linguistic subfields
Edited by Meghan E. Armstrong, Nicholas Henriksen and Maria del Mar Vanrell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 6] 2016
► pp. 251–276

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Prosodic and gestural features distinguish the intention of pointing gestures in child-directed communication

 | Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
 | Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany
 | ICREA (Institut Català de Recerca i Estudis Avançats)
Published online: 31 March 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.6.12est
Previous literature had found that infants rely on the social-contextual information to understand the pragmatic meaning of a pointing gesture. Our study investigates the prosodic and gesture features accompanying a pointing gesture that infants may also use to infer its meaning. Nine caregiver-infant dyads played three games designed to elicit pointing acts with either an expressive, imperative, or informative pragmatic meaning. Results show that in all pragmatic situations caregivers mostly combine pointing gestures with speech to direct the infants attention to an object, and that in child-directed communication specific prosodic (intonation contour, pitch range, and mean syllable duration) and gesture features (hand shape, gesture duration, and the gesture’s lexical affiliate) indicate the pragmatic meaning of a pointing gesture.
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