Multimodal visions of language acquisition have been present in the literature for many years, highlighting developmental continuity between infants’ early actions on objects, gestures, and words or signs. This framework has recently been expanded to include consideration of early object exploration and motor development and how the multimodal experiences they create for infants and infuse into social interactions support language development. This vision of multimodality in communication and language – firmly grounded in development and the fundamentally multimodal nature of infants’ early experiences and actions – can broaden our view of language and its emergence in infancy.
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