The semantic content of gestures varies with definiteness, information status and clause structure

Debreslioska, Sandra; Gullberg, Marianne

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2020.06.005

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…It is therefore possible to complement an analysis of information status of first mentions with, for instance, the semantics of the verbs used to introduce an entity into discourse or the position of the referent in the utterance. It is already known that semantics plays an important role in the way that gestures represent information (e.g., McNeill, 1992McNeill, , 2005Kita and Özyürek, 2003;Kendon, 2004;Gullberg et al, 2008;Gullberg, 2009Gullberg, , 2011Debreslioska and Gullberg, 2020). However, it is rather unclear whether and if so how the semantics of a referential expression and/or the verb used to introduce a referent would also affect the incidence of gestures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Placing the referents in utterance final (focal) position is typical in the context of first mentions. The rest of the entities were instantiated as either oblique arguments (29% of all referential expressions) or in verbless utterances (11% of all referential expressions; Table 1; for a construction type analysis and how different constructions are related to representational gestures, see Wu, 2018;Debreslioska and Gullberg, 2020).…”

Section: Speech Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What’s New? Gestures Accompany Inferable Rather Than Brand-New Referents in Discourse

Debreslioska

Gullberg

2020

Front. Psychol.

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The literature on bimodal discourse reference has shown that gestures are sensitive to referents' information status in discourse. Gestures occur more often with new referents/ first mentions than with given referents/subsequent mentions. However, because not all new entities at first mention occur with gestures, the current study examines whether gestures are sensitive to a difference in information status between brand-new and inferable entities and variation in nominal definiteness. Unexpectedly, the results show that gestures are more frequent with inferable referents (hearer new but discourse old) than with brand-new referents (hearer new and discourse new). The findings reveal new aspects of the relationship between gestures and speech in discourse, specifically suggesting a complementary (disambiguating) function for gestures in the context of first mentioned discourse entities. The results thus highlight the multi-functionality of gestures in relation to speech.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Speech Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

What’s New? Gestures Accompany Inferable Rather Than Brand-New Referents in Discourse

Debreslioska

Gullberg

2020

Front. Psychol.

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“…A growing body of research shows that the structural positioning of gestures is equally important as their temporal positioning. Gestures are used to substitute or fulfill certain syntactic constructions (Olsher, 2004) and they accompany certain words, phrases or clauses more often than others (Kok, 2017;Debreslioska and Gullberg, 2020). At the level of turn-taking, their application serves concrete interactional goals, such as predicting turn ends and the next turns or actions (Streeck, 2009b;Lilja and Piirainen-Marsh, 2019), which requires manipulation of gesture timing (e.g., stroke prolongation).…”

Section: Gesture Positionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Action-Depicting Gestures and Morphosyntax: The Function of Gesture-Speech Alignment in the Conversational Turn

Urbanik

Svennevig

2021

Front. Psychol.

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The current study examines the role of action-depicting gestures in conversational turns by focusing on their semantic characteristics and temporal position in relation to their verbal affiliates (action verbs or more complex verb phrases). The data are video recordings of naturally occurring interactions in multilingual construction sites in Norway. The analysis distinguishes two modes of action depiction: generic depictions, which represent the action as a general type, and contextualized depictions, which in addition include deictic references to the spatio-material environment or iconic representations of the specific manner of action performance. These two modes typically occupy different positions in the turn. Generic depictions are mostly initiated before the verbalization of the action or are synchronized with it, while contextualized depictions mostly start simultaneously with the verbalization and extend beyond the verb phrase or the turn. The pre-positioned and synchronized generic gestures are shown to serve as a practice for facilitating recognition of the verbalized action and may be temporally manipulated in order to pre-empt understanding problems in the face of reduced common linguistic resources. The post-positioned contextualized depictions serve instead to add specifying information about aspects of the action referred to and thereby to complement or supplement the meaning of the verb phrase, securing understanding of action specifics. The study contributes to research on gesture-speech synchrony by demonstrating how variation in the alignment of action depiction and syntax is used to direct the recipient’s attention toward different interactional goals.

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“…Kendon (2004: 158-159) proposes a functional framework, including referential, pragmatic and interactive gestures. Kendon's referential functions are similar to those described by Calbris (2011), and those in studies that refer to 'representational gestures' that describe concrete entities and actions (e.g., Debreslioska & Gullberg, 2020). Pragmatic functions are defined as nonreferential, pragmatic roles in gestures, including model functions (i.e., indicating the speaker's attitudes to the utterance), performative functions (i.e., performing speech acts), and parsing functions (i.e., marking up the structure of discourse).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Towards a speech–gesture profile of pragmatic markers: The case of “you know”

Chen

Adolphs

2023

Journal of Pragmatics

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The semantic content of gestures varies with definiteness, information status and clause structure

Cited by 11 publications

References 24 publications

What’s New? Gestures Accompany Inferable Rather Than Brand-New Referents in Discourse

What’s New? Gestures Accompany Inferable Rather Than Brand-New Referents in Discourse

Action-Depicting Gestures and Morphosyntax: The Function of Gesture-Speech Alignment in the Conversational Turn

Towards a speech–gesture profile of pragmatic markers: The case of “you know”

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