Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of Gestures
The present cross-sectional study assessed the role of multimodal cues in marking focus types during early childhood, focusing on prosodic prominence, gesture presence, and gestural prominence. A total of 116 Catalan-speaking three-, four- and five-year-olds participated in a semi-controlled interac...
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2025-04-01
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| author | Sara Coego Núria Esteve-Gibert Pilar Prieto |
| author_facet | Sara Coego Núria Esteve-Gibert Pilar Prieto |
| author_sort | Sara Coego |
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| description | The present cross-sectional study assessed the role of multimodal cues in marking focus types during early childhood, focusing on prosodic prominence, gesture presence, and gestural prominence. A total of 116 Catalan-speaking three-, four- and five-year-olds participated in a semi-controlled interactive task eliciting words in three focus conditions: information, contrastive, and corrective. The data were coded manually using holistic assessments for all three measures. The results indicated, first, that children’s prosodic and gestural behavior was key in marking corrective focus. A significant tendency to use more gestures and increase both prosodic and gestural prominence was found in the corrective focus condition across the three age groups. Second, a developmental difference emerged in the acquisition of contrastive focus. Three-year-olds relied solely on gesture presence to encode contrastive focus, being unable to differentiate it prosodically from information focus. In turn, four- and five-year-olds used both gestures and prosody, with contrastive focus not only receiving more gestures than information focus but also increased prosodic prominence. This finding shows that gesture presence is a precursor to prosodic prominence in marking contrastive focus in Catalan, thus supporting the idea that gesture production can bootstrap the expression of focus type distinctions. |
| format | Article |
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| institution | Kabale University |
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| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-04-01 |
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| spelling | doaj-art-79d6160f99ee4cccb0affb1a1ff10f232025-08-20T03:47:54ZengMDPI AGLanguages2226-471X2025-04-011059210.3390/languages10050092Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of GesturesSara Coego0Núria Esteve-Gibert1Pilar Prieto2Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08002 Barcelona, SpainFaculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 08018 Barcelona, SpainInstitució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), 08010 Barcelona, SpainThe present cross-sectional study assessed the role of multimodal cues in marking focus types during early childhood, focusing on prosodic prominence, gesture presence, and gestural prominence. A total of 116 Catalan-speaking three-, four- and five-year-olds participated in a semi-controlled interactive task eliciting words in three focus conditions: information, contrastive, and corrective. The data were coded manually using holistic assessments for all three measures. The results indicated, first, that children’s prosodic and gestural behavior was key in marking corrective focus. A significant tendency to use more gestures and increase both prosodic and gestural prominence was found in the corrective focus condition across the three age groups. Second, a developmental difference emerged in the acquisition of contrastive focus. Three-year-olds relied solely on gesture presence to encode contrastive focus, being unable to differentiate it prosodically from information focus. In turn, four- and five-year-olds used both gestures and prosody, with contrastive focus not only receiving more gestures than information focus but also increased prosodic prominence. This finding shows that gesture presence is a precursor to prosodic prominence in marking contrastive focus in Catalan, thus supporting the idea that gesture production can bootstrap the expression of focus type distinctions.https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/5/92information structurefocus typescontrastcorrectionmultimodal developmentprosody |
| spellingShingle | Sara Coego Núria Esteve-Gibert Pilar Prieto Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of Gestures Languages information structure focus types contrast correction multimodal development prosody |
| title | Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of Gestures |
| title_full | Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of Gestures |
| title_fullStr | Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of Gestures |
| title_full_unstemmed | Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of Gestures |
| title_short | Preschoolers Mark Focus Types Through Multimodal Prominence: Further Evidence for the Precursor Role of Gestures |
| title_sort | preschoolers mark focus types through multimodal prominence further evidence for the precursor role of gestures |
| topic | information structure focus types contrast correction multimodal development prosody |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/5/92 |
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