Multimodality and Complexity in Children’s Negations
Résumé
Previous research in first language acquisition has shown that negation is a great locus to analyze
children’s spoken and nonIspoken means of expression (Clark, 1970). The present study scrutinizes
the interplay between modalities of expression (speech, gestures, vocalizations and body
movements) in the construction of negation to account for the complexity of language. This
multimodal study brings together functionalist and constructivist theoretical approach (Tomasello,
2003), embodied interaction and gesture studies.
The data is composed of two monolingual French and English children filmed monthly from 10
months to 4 years old in natural motherIchild dyadic interactions. A negation was coded when the
child or the mother used 1) a spoken negation like no or not in English, non or pas in French, 2)
when the speaker used body movements (headshake, pushing objects away) that contributed to
express negation and 3) when the interlocutor understood the speaker’s behavior as being
negative. Using a coding system relying on the use of several compatible programs to combine
qualitative and quantitative analyses (BeaupoilIHourdel et al. 2015), all combinations of spoken
and nonIspoken negations were coded. Overall, 1172 multimodal negations with 537 occurrences
in the English data and 635 in the French data were analyzed.
Previous work on the role of gestures in spoken and gestural multimodal utterances have shown
that gesture 1) can be equivalent to speech, 2) can complement speech and thus contribute to the
construction of meaning in interaction, or 3) can supplement speech by adding a layer of meaning
to the spoken utterance (Capirci et al., 1996). This study shows that when children combine
modalities to express negation, one can identify several levels of syntactic and cognitive complexity
(Sekali, 2012) in the construction of meaning. Cognitive complexity corresponds to the internalized
structure of utterances rendered visible by the use of modalities whereas syntactic complexity
refers to complex sentences. It is thus necessary to analyze the role of all combinations of
modalities of expression in children to understand the complexity of language.
Results show that several levels of cognitive/syntactic complexity are possible:
1) the multimodal utterance is neither cognitively nor syntactically complex;
2) the multimodal utterance is cognitively but not syntactically complex;
3) the multimodal utterance is cognitively and syntactically complex.
Adopting a multimodal approach helps broaden our understanding of complex structure. Indeed, in
3) children produce singleIclause utterances and thus simple syntactic sentences. Yet, the
association of speech with a nonIspoken modality contributes to simultaneously and multimodally
express complex sentences with two or more predicates. This study shows that the use of
synchronized modalities in negative contexts should be considered a syntactic and cognitive skill.
Multimodality therefore implies the reIevaluation of what a complex utterance is.