Abstract
Many studies try to explain thought processes based on verbal data alone and often take the linguistic variation between languages as evidence for cross-linguistic thought processes during speaking. We argue that looking at co-speech gestures might broaden the scope and shed new light on different thinking-for-speaking patterns. Data comes from a corpus study investigating the relationship between speech and gesture in two typologically different languages: Danish, a satellite-framed language and Italian, a verb-framed language. Results show cross-linguistic variation in how motion components are mapped onto linguistic constituents, but also show how Italian speakers to some degree deviate from standard verb-framed lexicalization patterns, and use typical satellite-framed constructions. Co-speech gestures, when they occur, largely follow the patterns used in speech, with a notable exception: In 28% of the cases, in fact, Italian speakers express manner in path-only speech constructions gesturally. This finding suggests that gestures may be instrumental in revealing what semantic components speakers attend to while speaking; in other words, purely verbal data may not fully account for the thinking part of the thinking-for-speaking hypothesis.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of Pragmatics |
| Volume | 99 |
| Pages (from-to) | 39-61 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| ISSN | 0378-2166 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2016 |