Viewpoint in speech–gesture integration: Linguistic structure, discourse structure, and event structure

Abstract

Abstract We examine a corpus of narrative data to determine which types of events evoke character viewpoint gestures, and which evoke observer viewpoint gestures. We consider early claims made by McNeill (1992) that character viewpoint tends to occur with transitive utterances and utterances that are causally central to the narrative. We argue that the structure of the event itself must be taken into account: there are some events that cannot plausibly evoke both types of gesture. We show that linguistic structure (transitivity), event structure (visuo-spatial and motoric properties), and discourse structure all play a role. We apply these findings to a recent model of embodied language production, the Gestures as Simulated Action framework. Keywords: EmbodimentEvent structureGesturePerspectiveViewpoint Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Mark Turner, Sotaro Kita, and three anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions regarding data analysis. The issue of gestures that represent visual imagery requiring a process of transduction was first raised for the author by Daniel Casasanto. She also thanks the research assistants in the Gesture and Cognition Lab who worked on data collection and analysis, in particular, Amanda Dewitt, Rochelle Hudson, Huston Hoburg, Caitlin Dawson, and Noel Hanzel.