There is a growing awareness that language and gesture are deeply intertwin
ed in the spontaneous expression of adults. Although some research suggests
that children use gesture independently of speech, there is scant research
on how language and gesture develop in children older than 2 years. We rep
ort here on a longitudinal investigation of the relation between gesture an
d language development in French-English bilingual children from 2 to 3 1/2
years old. The specific gesture types of iconics and beats correlated with
the development of the children's two languages, whereas pointing types of
gestures generally did not. The onset of iconic and beat gestures coincide
d with the onset of sentencelike utterance separately in each of the childr
en's two languages. The findings show that gesture is related to language d
evelopment rather than being independent from it. Contrasting theories abou
t how gesture is related to language development are discussed.