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

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Sandra Debreslioska¹  Marianne Gullberg¹ 

[1] Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University;Lund University Humanities Lab, Lund University

关键词: gestures;    discourse;    reference;    information status;    speech-gesture relationship;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01935

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

CC BY