How a modality-neutral prosodic dimension can enrich the multimodal language acquisition framework: A commentary on Karadöller,Sümer and Özyürek

Abstract

Like Karadöller and colleagues, we believe that any language acquisition framework needs to incorporate visual expressions in sign language as well as co-speech gestures in spoken languages. To do so, Karadöller and colleagues focus on deictic and iconic aspects of visual expressions, which convey semantic meaning. Our proposal is that a multimodal language acquisition framework also needs to account for non-referential body movements because they are highly common in communication and they significantly contribute to language structure and language meaning at the prosodic and pragmatic levels of language.

Keywords

Non-referential gestures prosody pragmatics multimodal language acquisition beat gestures

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