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In:From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance: Essays in honor of Adam Kendon
Edited by Mandana Seyfeddinipur and Marianne Gullberg
[Not in series 188] 2014
► pp. 311–330

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The development of two pragmatic gestures of the so-called Open Hand Supine family in Italian children

Published online: 6 August 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/z.188.14gra
This study examines the use of two recurring pragmatic gestures, Palm Presentation or PP and Palm with a Lateral Movement or PL gestures (Kendon 2004), in Italian children aged between 4 and 10. Results indicate that PP is absent in 4-and 5-year-olds, while PL is observed in association with crystallized expressions. In contrast, older children use both PP and PL in contexts similar to adults. The appearance of such gestures seems connected to the increasing ability to structure a narrative, since it is observed in the use of different temporal and meta-discursive connectives, and to exercise rhetorical control over one’s own discourse, since it is also observed in the usage of connectives serving as modulators.
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