Co-speech Pointing Gestures as the Visual Determiner in Early Word Learning

Co-speech pointing gestures are often observed in infant-directed communication, and these gestures at infants’ early lexical stage can predict their later language development. However, why these gestures correlate with infants’ language development remains unclear. Empirical evidence remains inconsistent regarding whether co-speech pointing gestures contribute to infants’ lexical learning through socio-pragmatic functions. Instead, informed by sign language research and the neural processing of pointing gestures, this study offers a novel framework on co-speech pointing gestures in infants’ word learning. Specifically, it argues that such gestures construct a plausible linguistic unit with speech, making the speech interpretable and the referentiality learnable for infants at the early lexical stage.