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- Volume 9, Issue, 2009
Gesture - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2009
Volume 9, Issue 2, 2009
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Discourse coherence and gesture interpretation
Author(s): Alex Lascarides and Matthew Stonepp.: 147–180 (34)More LessIn face-to-face conversation, communicators orchestrate multimodal contributions that meaningfully combine the linguistic resources of spoken language and the visuo-spatial affordances of gesture. In this paper, we characterise this meaningful combination in terms of the COHERENCE of gesture and speech. Descriptive analyses illustrate the diverse ways gesture interpretation can supplement and extend the interpretation of prior gestures and accompanying speech. We draw certain parallels with the inventory of COHERENCE RELATIONS found in discourse between successive sentences. In both domains, we suggest, interlocutors make sense of multiple communicative actions in combination by using these coherence relations to link the actions’ interpretations into an intelligible whole. Descriptive analyses also emphasise the improvisation of gesture; the abstraction and generality of meaning in gesture allows communicators to interpret gestures in open-ended ways in new utterances and contexts. We draw certain parallels with interlocutors’ reasoning about underspecified linguistic meanings in discourse. In both domains, we suggest, coherence relations facilitate meaning-making by RESOLVING the meaning of each communicative act through constrained inference over information made salient in the prior discourse. Our approach to gesture interpretation lays the groundwork for formal and computational models that go beyond previous approaches based on compositional syntax and semantics, in better accounting for the flexibility and the constraints found in the interpretation of speech and gesture in conversation. At the same time, it shows that gesture provides an important source of evidence to sharpen the general theory of coherence in communication.
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Across time, across the body: Transversal temporal gestures
Author(s): Kensy Cooperrider and Rafael Núñezpp.: 181–206 (26)More LessTalk about time is commonly accompanied by co-speech gesture. Though much recent work has looked at how time is construed as space in the languages of the world, few studies have examined temporal gestures in any detail. Our focus is on a particular pattern among American English speakers — transversal temporal gestures — in which time is conceptualized as moving from left to right across the body. Based on numerous examples elicited in a controlled observational paradigm, we suggest a classification of American English speakers’ transversal temporal gestures into five types — placing, pointing, duration-marking, bridging, and animating — and provide examples of each type. Discussion focuses on the following three topics: the usefulness of quasi-experimental approaches for the study of gesture; variation in temporal gestures across cultures; and how temporal gestures fit into a broader understanding of metaphorical gestures.
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When do people start to recognize signs?
Author(s): Jeroen Arendsen, Andrea J. van Doorn and Huib de Ridderpp.: 207–236 (30)More LessThe aim of this paper is to examine when signers start to recognize the lexical meaning of a sign. This is studied with movies of 32 mono-morphemic signs of Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN). Signs were presented in isolation or with preceding fidgets (e.g., rubbing your nose). Signers watched these movies at normal playing speed and had to respond as soon as they recognized a sign, which they were able to do, on average, about 850 ms after the coded beginning of the sign. By subtracting the time participants need to generate a motor response to a visible event, which was 310 ms on average, sign recognition was estimated to occur after around 540 ms. The results were further analyzed in relation to the sign’s movement phases (preparation, nucleus, and recovery) and for effects of participant characteristics, sign characteristics, and embedding conditions. The current findings are compared with earlier work on the time course of lexical sign recognition. Moreover, they are compared with findings from an earlier experiment on detecting the beginning of a sign (Arendsen et al., 2007) to study possible interference of lexical recognition with sign detection by signers.
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Pointing the Yoruba way
Author(s): Ọlanikẹ Ọla Oriepp.: 237–261 (25)More LessThis paper gives a description of Yoruba pointing behavior, especially pointing as it relates to people in interaction contexts. First, it is shown that pointing is regulated by socio-cultural factors. Secondly, it is shown that non-manual points such as lip points are complex points which use the gaze as the primary pointer; other head-area gestures ‘switch on’ the deictic function of the gaze to pinpoint the specific referent in the discourse space. This paper also describes a form of pointing, termed ‘eye-click’, in which the eyes have both the function of gazing and ‘switching on’ the deictic vector of gaze. Thirdly, some pointing practices in sub-Saharan Africa are examined and compared.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 22 (2023)
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Volume 21 (2022)
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Volume 20 (2021)
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Volume 19 (2020)
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Volume 18 (2019)
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Volume 17 (2018)
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Volume 16 (2017)
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Volume 15 (2016)
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Volume 14 (2014)
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Volume 13 (2013)
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Volume 12 (2012)
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Volume 11 (2011)
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Volume 10 (2010)
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Volume 9 (2009)
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Volume 8 (2008)
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Volume 7 (2007)
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Volume 6 (2006)
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Volume 5 (2005)
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Volume 4 (2004)
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Volume 3 (2003)
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Volume 2 (2002)
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Volume 1 (2001)
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