Language, Gesture, and Context of Use in Mandarin Chinese is a study of quantitative-qualitative analysis of linguistic-gestural instances from conversations among adult native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin.

Kawai Chui is Professor of Linguistics and a research fellow at the Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning, and the Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity, National Chengchi University, Taipei. Her main research interests include the use of language and gesture in discourse, the neurocognitive processing of gestures in speech communication, and the gesture development in children with typical development and children with language delay. She is also engaged in a cross-language investigation of linguistic universality and specificity across Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Czech.

Contents

Tables

Figures

Preface

1 Language and Gesture in Conversation

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Are gestures informative?

1.3 Do gestures synchronize with speech?

1.4 Overview of the study

2 Speech-Gesture Cases in Conversation

2.1 Introduction

2.2 The selection of cross-modal cases

2.3 Gesture phases and temporal demarcation

2.4 Gestural configuration and types of ideas

2.5 A corpus of data for study

3 Language, Gesture, and Semantic Relationship

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Entity

3.3 Motion, manner, and path

3.4 Action and manner

3.5 General discussion

3.6 Conclusion

4 Metaphors in Language and Gesture

4.1 Introduction

4.2 The entity metaphor

4.3 Motion metaphors

4.4 Orientation metaphors

4.5 Action metaphors

4.6 General discussion

4.7 Conclusion

5 Time in Language and Gesture

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Temporal span

5.3 Deictic time

5.4 Sequence time

5.5 General discussion

5.6 Conclusion

6 Language, Gesture, and Temporal Relationship

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Preparation onsets, speech onsets, and fluent speech

6.3 Stroke onsets, speech onsets, and fluent speech

6.4 Gesture onsets, speech onsets, and disrupted speech

6.5 General discussion

6.6 Conclusion

7 Perspectives on Production of Gestures in Speech Communication

7.1 Use profile of gestures in conversation

7.2 The lexical-retrieval view

7.3 The action-system view

7.4 The growth-point view

7.5 General discussion

7.6 Conclusion

References

Appendices

Index