Cross-Linguistic Variation in Co-Speech Gesture Timing: Evidence for Grammatical Control

Co-speech gestures have traditionally been treated as an ‘extralinguistic’ phenomenon, not implicated in theories of grammar (e.g. Hagoort & van Berkum 2007). In this talk, I discuss cross-linguistic findings on the coordination of speech and co-speech gesture that reveal clear evidence of language-specific timing patterns, a hallmark of grammatical control (Pierrehumbert 1980; Keating 1984). Looking at data from Medʉmba, Babanki, and two varieties of English,  I demonstrate that a) gestures reveal language-specific patterns of prosodic prominence, and b) co-speech gestures, like oral articulatory gestures, show language-specific patterns in the gestural landmarks selected for coordination (c.f. Browman & Goldstein 1986; Gafos 2002; Shaw et al. 2021). I then propose a framework for integrating co-speech gestures into the analysis of prosodic grammar.

Location: Kaplan Hall A65