Children who have not developed speech tend to use gestures to communicate. Since gestures are not encouraged and suppressed in the Indian traditional context while speaking, this study focused on profiling the developing gestures in children to explore whether they use the gestures before development of speech. Eight normally developing 8-month-old children served as participants, who were followed up till the age of 18 months. Mother–child interactions were video-recorded and analyzed for deictic and representational gestures. The age of emergence and representational gestures in this study were relatively diverse from those in the Western studies; furthermore, representational gestures were unique and depended on the culture and mothers’ input.

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Various speech metrics have been developed to assess and monitor phonological development in young children. Process Density Index (PDI) is one such measure employed to determine the severity of phonological errors and speech intelligibility. The present study explored the utility of PDI as a measure of phonological development in 756 Tulu-speaking children between 3;0–7;0 years, across age and gender groups. Results revealed that the youngest group of children exhibited a higher number of phonological processes and a higher PDI score as compared to the oldest group. Children with higher PDI scores exhibited poorer speech intelligibility than those with lower PDI Scores. Further, a statistically significant gender difference with boys exhibiting higher PDI scores than girls with no interaction between age and gender was noted. The study finding provides an insight into the phonological aspects specific to Tulu language and suggests the utility of PDI as a potential clinical measure while assessing phonological issues.