Functions of Language - Volume 23, Issue 2, 2016

In recent years, consensus has been growing that certain co-speech gestures must be incorporated in grammatical theory. Contrary to traditional beliefs, gestural expression has been found to be systematic in various ways, to exhibit some degree of compositional structure and to be to a certain extent language-specific. Most current work on the gesture-grammar interface is, nonetheless, rather programmatic in character or lacks an appropriate theoretical framework. This paper shows that Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) provides a promising model for understanding the grammar-gesture relationship in a more comprehensive and detailed way than has thus far been achieved. It first evaluates how a FDG perspective on language structure aligns with the ways gestures have been studied. Then it demonstrates that various types of co-speech manual gestures can be classified (perhaps even exhaustively) according to the pragmatic and semantic layers recognized in FDG. On the basis of this survey, a first sketch of a multi-channel (speech-gesture) version of FDG’s architecture is presented. Finally, some challenges are put forward that arise when taking the multimodal grammar enterprise seriously. Altogether, the content of this paper suggests that a multimodal perspective on grammar can be mutually beneficial for functionally oriented linguists and gesture researchers.

Subjectivity and intersubjectivity have long been recognized as central to the understanding of the relations between language, mind and society. They arise in an interactive world for the mind of the individual and shape his/her (inter)personal reality. In present-day linguistics, there are two major approaches to subjectivity. One is associated with Langacker and focuses on cognitive construal. The other framework, which was developed by Traugott, zooms in on diachronic changes on the conceptual level. Naturally, diachronic developments are intimately related to synchronic variation and the conceptual content of an utterance hinges on its presentation and perspectivization. This paper, therefore, argues that, rather than being discrepant and treating distinct phenomena, as is widely suggested (e.g. Brisard 2006; Nuyts 2001, 2012), the two frameworks can be reconciled. By so doing, the ensuing discussion yields an integrated view on objectivity and (inter)subjectivity, a view that will be organized around four main arguments.

This study proposes NSM semantic explications for a cross-section of the English verbal lexicon of ‘doing and happening’. The twenty-five verbs are drawn from about a dozen verb classes, including verbs for non-typical locomotion (crawl, swim, fly), other intransitive activities (play, sing), manipulation (hold), activities that affect material integrity (cut, grind, dig), creation/production (make, build, carve), actions that affect people or things (hit, kick, kill) or cause a change of location (pick up, put, throw, push), bodily reactions to feelings (laugh, cry), displacement (fall, sink) and weather phenomena (rain, snow). Though the verbs explicated are specifically English verbs, they have been chosen with an eye to their relevance to lexical typology and cross-linguistic semantics (many are drawn from the Verb Meanings List of the Leipzig Valency Patterns project) and it is hoped that the analytical strategy and methodology exemplified in this study can be a useful model for research into other languages. The study demonstrates the application of the NSM concept of semantic templates, which provide a clear “skeletal” structure for explications of considerable internal complexity and which help account for shared semantic and grammatical properties of verbs of a given subclass.