[lingtalks] Seyda Ozcaliskan Talk, Wednesday Feb. 21, 12pm

[Steven Ford]

The UCSD Department of Cognitive Science is pleased to announce a talk by

Seyda Ozcaliskan Ph.D

University of Chicago, Department of Psychology


Wednesday, February 21, 2007 at 12pm
Cognitive Science Building Room 003


"From first words to first metaphors:
Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language learning"


ABSTRACT:

When people talk, they gesture. Even children, from the earliest stages of 
language learning, use their hands when they speak. Research has made it 
clear that gesture is integrated both temporally and semantically to the 
speech it accompanies, and can convey substantive information not captured 
by speech. As such, gesture offers insight into children’s conceptual 
understanding of language before this understanding becomes explicit in 
speech.

My research focuses on children’s earliest linguistic abilities and 
examines whether precursors of these abilities can be found in children’s 
gestures. More specifically, I examine whether and how gesture can inform 
us about early language learning, from the onset of first words and first 
sentences to the emergence of first metaphors. I approach this question 
from a wide variety of angles by studying both typically- and 
atypically-developing children, as well as children who are exposed to 
structurally different languages.

Overall, my research places gesture at the cutting edge of early language 
development­gesture both presages oncoming changes in children’s speech and 
also serves as a forerunner of linguistic advances. My future work will 
examine how robust gesture’s contribution to language learning is across 
different populations and different languages.  
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