文章基本信息

标题：What’s New? Gestures Accompany Inferable Rather Than Brand-New Referents in Discourse
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作者：Debreslioska, Sandra ; Gullberg, Marianne
期刊名称：Frontiers in Psychology
电子版ISSN：1664-1078
出版年度：2020
卷号：11
页码：1-11
DOI：10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01935
出版社：Frontiers Media
摘要：The literature on bimodal discourse reference has shown that gestures are sensitive to referents’ information status in discourse. Gestures occur more often with new referents/first mentions than with given referents/subsequent mentions. However, because not all new entities at first mention occur with gestures, the current study examines whether gestures are sensitive to a difference in information status between brand-new and inferable entities, and variation in nominal definiteness. Unexpectedly, the results show that gestures are more frequent with inferable referents (hearer-new but discourse-old) than with brand-new referents (hearer- and discourse-new). The findings reveal new aspects of the relationship between gestures and speech in discourse, specifically suggesting a complementary (disambiguating) function for gestures in the context of first mentioned discourse entities. The results thus highlight the multi-functionality of gestures in relation to speech.
关键词：Gestures; discourse; Reference; Information status; Speech-gesture relationship; visual language; information structure; New/given information