A corpus-based study of ‘Away gestures’ across four signed languages

Abstract

This paper presents a study of four recurrent gestures: sweeping away, holding away, brushing away and throwing away. These forms have so far only been studied for spoken languages and are said to form the ‘family of Away gestures’, which is semantically motivated by the effect of actions of removing or keeping away of things. Our corpus-based study aims to investigate these forms in four sign languages: Catalan, French Belgian, German, and Polish. We select and study a data sample that lasts approximately three hours. Our findings reveal the frequency, functions, and the lexicalisation status of the forms across the four studied languages.