Chapter 16. The blossoming of negation in gesture, sign and oral productions

Negation constructions in longitudinal adult-child data are an excellent source for the study of multimodality in language acquisition. First negative constructions seem to take over from early forms of rejection and avoidance, but tracing the transitions between actions and gestures, and between gestures and signed or spoken expressions in young children is quite complex. We focus on multimodal analysis of negation in the productions of five children between the ages of 0;10 and 3;6 interacting with their parents in various linguistic environments (monolingual French, monolingual English, monolingual LSF, bilingual French/LSF, bilingual French/Italian). We present the individual multimodal path of each child, illustrate the continuum between actions, gestures and signed/spoken constructions and analyze the common trend that leads children into symbolic communication through multi-semiotic means of expression.