Abstract
This study examined how one child used gestures and vocal language in daily life in the second year of her life. Before she was 15.5 months old, the girl used both gestural and vocal language to name objects. But, after that time gestures were no longer used alone for naming. Instead she also indicated vocally the state of the object and the action on the object. At this same age, the girl appeared to use gestural language in different contexts than previously. This suggests a relationship between decontextualization and the transition from gestural to vocal language. Most of her two-or three-word utterances about states or actions occured at almost the same time as when she began to vocalize without gestures. This implies that as gestural language disappears, the structure of sentences becomes complex.
