Zulu oral narrative development from a speech and gesture perspective

  • Ramona Kunene-Nicolas
Keywords: Oral narratives, Co-speech gesture, Bantu language, Zulu, Discourse, Late language development,

Abstract

Literature on child language development usually focuses mainly on early language acquisition (0 - 4 years) and on non-Bantu languages. This article focuses on 1) late language development and 2) the complete language communicative process, which includes non-verbal clues in first language Zulu oral narratives. This study brings evidence that shows pragmatic discursive ability develops with age and that spontaneous co-speech gesture develops in parallel. In a controlled language production task, oral narratives were elicited from three child cohorts (6 years, 9 years and 12 years) and one adult group. Results show a gradual increase of discursive ability in both speech and co-speech gesture. We also present quantifiable evidence that 12-year-old Zulu children are not yet as competent in complex discourse as adults, in line with current literature on late language development of other Asian and European languages. These findings are relevant for understanding how oral and writing skills develop in informal and formal learning environments.

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Author Biography

Ramona Kunene-Nicolas
Ramona Kunene-Nicolas is Lecturer of Linguistics and Head of Department at the University of the Witwatersrand. She joined Wits in 2012. She is the coordinator of the Psycholinguistics and Semantics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Her areas of interest are first language acquisition, bilingualism, multimodality of speech, discourse analysis, gesture and speech. Email: Ramona.KuneneNicolas@wits.ac.za
Published
2015-12-15
Section
Articles