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


ABSTRACT: 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.

SUBMITTER: Debreslioska S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7539624 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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

Debreslioska Sandra S   Gullberg Marianne M  

Frontiers in psychology 20200923


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. Unexpected  ...[more]

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