General- and Language-Specific Factors Influence Reference Tracking in Speech and Gesture in Discourse

Abstract

Referent accessibility influences expressions in speech and gestures in similar ways. Speakers mostly use richer forms as noun phrases (NPs) in speech and gesture more when referents have low accessibility, whereas they use reduced forms such as pronouns more often and gesture less when referents have high accessibility. We investigated the relationships between speech and gesture during reference tracking in a pro-drop language-Turkish. Overt pronouns were not strongly associated with accessibility but with pragmatic context (i.e., marking similarity, contrast). Nevertheless, speakers gestured more when referents were reintroduced versus maintained and when referents were expressed with NPs versus pronouns. Pragmatic context did not influence gestures. Further, pronouns in low-accessibility contexts were accompanied with gestures-possibly for reference disambiguation-more often than previously found for non-pro-drop languages in such contexts. These findings enhance our understanding of the relationships between speech and gesture at the discourse level.

Ageing, working memory, and mental imagery: Understanding gestural communication in younger and older adults

“…Studies suggest possible cross-cultural or cross-linguistic differences in the frequency of gesture use (Azar et al, 2019; Kita, 2009). However, these variations could play a role in the overall rate of gesture use and may influence both younger and older adults similarly.…”

Deconstructing the Native Speaker: Further Evidence From Heritage Speakers for Why This Horse Should Be Dead!

“…The category “native speaker” has been used to characterize a particular speaker population for many years (see Hopp, 2016 ; Azar et al, 2019 ; Ionin et al, 2021 ; Redl et al, 2021 as recent cases in point). What most researchers seem to agree on is that a native speaker is defined as a speaker who acquires their language naturalistically in early childhood ( Cook, 1999 ; Davies, 2004 , 2013 ).…”

Gesture Use and Processing: A Review on Individual Differences in Cognitive Resources

“…Current theories in cognitive science have not fully accounted for the existence as well as the causes of these individual differences for scientific gain ( Underwood, 1975 ; Vogel and Awh, 2008 ). Most of the earlier studies in the gesture literature disregarded the variation among individuals and focused on group comparisons based on age (e.g., Feyereisen and Havard, 1999 ; Colletta et al, 2010 ; Austin and Sweller, 2014 ; Özer et al, 2017 ), sex (e.g., Özçalışkan and Goldin-Meadow, 2010 ), neuropsychological impairments (e.g., Cleary et al, 2011 ; Göksun et al, 2013b , 2015 ; Akbıyık et al, 2018 ; Akhavan et al, 2018 ; Hilverman et al, 2018 ; Özer et al, 2019 ; see Clough and Duff, 2020 for a review), culture, and the native status of the speakers and the listeners (i.e., bilinguals vs. monolinguals; e.g., Goldin-Meadow and Saltzman, 2000 ; Mayberry and Nicoladis, 2000 ; Pika et al, 2006 ; Kita, 2009 ; Nicoladis et al, 2009 ; Gullberg, 2010 ; Smithson et al, 2011 ; Kim and Lausberg, 2018 ; Azar et al, 2019 , 2020 ) to understand how human multimodal language faculty operates at a general level. The gesture theories and current experimental practices in the gesture literature mostly downplayed the significance of individual differences and treated them as error variance.…”