A recurring absence gesture in Northern Pastaza Kichwa

Abstract

In this paper I posit the use of a spread-fingered hand torque gesture among speakers of Northern Pastaza Kichwa (Quechuan, Ecuador) as a recurrent gesture conveying the semantic theme of absence. The data come from a documentary video corpus collected by multiple researchers. The gesture prototypically takes the form of at least one pair of rapid rotations of the palm (the torque). Fingers can be spread or slightly flexed towards the palm to varying degrees. This gesture is performed in a consistent manner across speakers (and expressions) and co-occurs with a set of speech strings with related semantic meanings. Taking a cognitive linguistic approach, I analyse the form, function, and contexts of this gesture and argue that, taken together, it should be considered a recurrent gesture that indicates absence.