title: A cross-linguistic study of the development of gesture and speech in Zulu and French oral narratives.
abstract: The present study reports on a developmental and cross-linguistic study of oral narratives produced by speakers of Zulu (a Bantu language) and French (a Romance language). Specifically, we focus on oral narrative performance as a bimodal (i.e., linguistic and gestural) behaviour during the late language acquisition phase. We analyzed seventy-two oral narratives produced by L1 Zulu and French adults and primary school children aged between five and ten years old. The data were all collected using a narrative retelling task. The results revealed a strong effect of age on discourse performance, confirming that narrative abilities improve with age, irrespective of language. However, the results also showed cross-linguistic differences. Zulu oral narratives were longer, more detailed, and accompanied by more co-speech gestures than the French narratives. The parallel effect of age and language on gestural behaviour is discussed and highlights the importance of studying oral narratives from a multimodal perspective within a cross-linguistic framework.
authors: Department of Linguistics,University of Witwatersrand,South Africa.
authors: Ramona
authors: R
authors: Kunene Nicolas
authors: Octogone Lab,Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès,France.
authors: Michèle
authors: M
authors: Guidetti
authors: UFR de Sciences du Langage et Laboratoire Lidilem,Université Stendhal,France.
authors: Jean-Marc
authors: JM
authors: Colletta
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D005868:Gestures; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D013019:South Africa; D013060:Speech; D055815:Young Adult