Keywords
temporal reference
mother and child multimodal communication.
How to Cite
Abstract
The study longitudinally explores the early emergence of temporal reference to objects/events that are either present or absent in time while mothers and children use and combine pointing and verbal references. Over one year of observations and in five separate sessions, eight Spanish mothers and their one- and two-year-old babies were observed while performing daily routines at home. The results indicated that overall mothers and children used more verbs referring to the present frame than to the past and future frames. As compared with the production of utterances accompanied by pointing, children were more likely to produce present references in the young group and displaced references (mostly near past and near future) in the older group when utterances were produced without pointing. Mothers closely preceded or accompanied the children’s verbal and gestural referential production to either immediate or displaced referents across ages, indicating that they systematically engage their children in talking about the present and especially about the future.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights. Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.