Esture can contribute. For example, Ebert and Ebert (2014) and Schlenker (2014) explore how gesture may be subsumed under existing analyses of components of semantic meaning that are not part of the asserted content of an utterance, such as appositive descriptions and speaker presuppositions. This area of research clearly benefits from, and ties in with, recent formal analyses of the semantics of gestures (Lascarides and Stone 2009). Although, as just noted, the information conveyed in gesture can, at times, supplement the information conveyed in speech, there are many times when gesture and speech convey information that appears to be redundant: the gesture contributes information that is already fully specified in the speech. We might have imagined that speakers would use their gestures primarily to disambiguate ambiguities in the spoken language (see de Ruiter, Bangerter, and Dings 2012 for discussion). However, and perhaps counter-intuitively, this is not often the case. So, Kita, and Goldin-Meadow (2009) found, for instance, that English speakers are more likely to produce an identifying gesture when a referent is uniquely specified in speech than when it is not fully specified in speech. This kind of redundancy between speech and gesture has also been documented in the domain of lexical and grammatical aspect, where, for example, gestures PM01183 site co-occurring with imperfective and progressive aspect last longer and involve more repetition than gestures co-occurring with perfect or perfective aspect (Duncan 2002; Parrill, Bergen, and Lichtenstein 2013). Another relatively transparent case of this phenomenon is found in iconic gestures that accompany spatial language. For example, a Zinacantecan gesturer discussed by Haviland (2004) described walking a far distance eastward. Concurrent with this spoken description, he produced a gesture that traced an eastward trajectory and moved higher and higher in space to indicate relative distance (here, farther and farther). Patterns such as these support proposals in which speech and gesture are planned together to express a shared underlying concept (Kita y ek, 2003). As a final point that relates to both co-timing and co-expressivity, one area that remains to be studied is the extent to which speakers have firm intuitions about the forms of gestures and the timing of gesture and speech. Such intuitions would be akin to MG-132MedChemExpress MG-132 notions of grammaticality and acceptability that have received significant attention in prosody (Gussenhoven 1983) and linguistics more generally. Even though speakers are typically notLang Linguist Compass. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2016 November 01.Abner et al.Pageaware that they have gestured (Alibali, Flevares and Goldin-Meadow 1997), they may still have intuitions about what would make an acceptable or unacceptable gesture. This is a rich area for future study.Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript4. Variation in gesture across languages and culturesJust as language is universal, yet variable, across speech communities, so too is gesture (see Kita 2009 for a review). However, there is, unfortunately, no entrenched typological tradition in the field of gesture studies, as there is for the field of linguistics. Consequently, our current knowledge of variation in human gesture is fragmentary. Nevertheless, it is clear that there are both universal patterns along with variation. An obvious place where we find such variation is in emblem.Esture can contribute. For example, Ebert and Ebert (2014) and Schlenker (2014) explore how gesture may be subsumed under existing analyses of components of semantic meaning that are not part of the asserted content of an utterance, such as appositive descriptions and speaker presuppositions. This area of research clearly benefits from, and ties in with, recent formal analyses of the semantics of gestures (Lascarides and Stone 2009). Although, as just noted, the information conveyed in gesture can, at times, supplement the information conveyed in speech, there are many times when gesture and speech convey information that appears to be redundant: the gesture contributes information that is already fully specified in the speech. We might have imagined that speakers would use their gestures primarily to disambiguate ambiguities in the spoken language (see de Ruiter, Bangerter, and Dings 2012 for discussion). However, and perhaps counter-intuitively, this is not often the case. So, Kita, and Goldin-Meadow (2009) found, for instance, that English speakers are more likely to produce an identifying gesture when a referent is uniquely specified in speech than when it is not fully specified in speech. This kind of redundancy between speech and gesture has also been documented in the domain of lexical and grammatical aspect, where, for example, gestures co-occurring with imperfective and progressive aspect last longer and involve more repetition than gestures co-occurring with perfect or perfective aspect (Duncan 2002; Parrill, Bergen, and Lichtenstein 2013). Another relatively transparent case of this phenomenon is found in iconic gestures that accompany spatial language. For example, a Zinacantecan gesturer discussed by Haviland (2004) described walking a far distance eastward. Concurrent with this spoken description, he produced a gesture that traced an eastward trajectory and moved higher and higher in space to indicate relative distance (here, farther and farther). Patterns such as these support proposals in which speech and gesture are planned together to express a shared underlying concept (Kita y ek, 2003). As a final point that relates to both co-timing and co-expressivity, one area that remains to be studied is the extent to which speakers have firm intuitions about the forms of gestures and the timing of gesture and speech. Such intuitions would be akin to notions of grammaticality and acceptability that have received significant attention in prosody (Gussenhoven 1983) and linguistics more generally. Even though speakers are typically notLang Linguist Compass. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2016 November 01.Abner et al.Pageaware that they have gestured (Alibali, Flevares and Goldin-Meadow 1997), they may still have intuitions about what would make an acceptable or unacceptable gesture. This is a rich area for future study.Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript4. Variation in gesture across languages and culturesJust as language is universal, yet variable, across speech communities, so too is gesture (see Kita 2009 for a review). However, there is, unfortunately, no entrenched typological tradition in the field of gesture studies, as there is for the field of linguistics. Consequently, our current knowledge of variation in human gesture is fragmentary. Nevertheless, it is clear that there are both universal patterns along with variation. An obvious place where we find such variation is in emblem.
