Based on the linguistic analysis of game explanations and retellings, the paper’s goal is to investigate the relation of preschool children’s situated discourse competence and iconic gestures in different communicative genres, focussing on reinforcing and supplementary speech-gesture-combinations. To this end, a method was developed to evaluate discourse competence as a context-sensitive and interactively embedded phenomenon. The so-called GLOBE-model was adapted to assess discourse competence in relation to interactive scaffolding. The findings show clear links between the children’s competence and their parents’ scaffolding. We suggest this to be evidence of a fine-tuned interactive support system. The results also indicate strong relations between higher discourse competence and increased frequency of iconic gestures. This applies in particular to reinforcing gestures. The results are interpreted as a confirmation that the speech-gesture system undergoes systematic changes during early childhood, and that gesturing becomes more iconic – and thus more communicative – when discourse competence is growing.

本文的目的是基于对游戏解释和复述的语言分析，研究学龄前儿童在不同交际体裁中的情境话语能力和标志性手势的关系，重点关注言语-手势-组合的强化和补充。为此，开发了一种方法来评估话语能力作为上下文敏感和交互式嵌入的现象。所谓的 GLOBE 模型适用于评估与交互式脚手架相关的话语能力。研究结果表明，孩子的能力与其父母的脚手架之间存在明显的联系。我们认为这是一个经过微调的交互式支持系统的证据。结果还表明，较高的话语能力与标志性手势频率的增加之间存在密切关系。这尤其适用于强化手势。研究结果被解释为证实，言语手势系统在幼儿期经历了系统性变化，并且当话语能力不断增强时，手势变得更具标志性，从而更具交流性。