ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role that gesture plays in human interaction for individuals who know a conventional spoken language. One of the most pervasive aspects of social organization is human language. Every human culture discovered thus far has developed a linguistic system that is shared by all of its members and pervades the way those members interact with one another. The parents comply because the children’s gestures are relatively transparent when interpreted in context. The deaf children’s gesture sentences have six properties found in all natural languages. Underlying each sentence is a predicate frame that determines how many arguments can appear along with the verb in the surface structure of that sentence. The children consistently order gestures for arguments as a function of thematic role; for example, they place gestures for intransitive actors and patients in the first position of their two-gesture sentences.
