How event perspective influences speech and co-speech gestures about motion

Abstract

Speakers of different languages systematically differ in how they package manner and path components of a motion event rendered from a self-motion perspective in both speech and co-speech gesture. Speakers of satellite-framed languages (e.g., German) use a conflated pattern, synthesizing manner and path of motion into a single clause or gesture; while speakers of verb-framed languages (e.g., Spanish) use a separated pattern, expressing manner and path in separate clauses or gestures. In this study, we ask whether the close coupling between speech and gesture observed for self-motion also becomes evident for events rendered from a caused-motion perspective, which show greater use of conflated strategy in speech across different languages. We observed speech and co-speech gestures of adult native Spanish and German speakers (N = 15/language), as they described an animated clip depicting both self- and caused-motion events. Our findings showed that expression of motion in speech systematically varied by event perspective—with greater use of conflated strategy in caused-motion events than in self-motion events. More important, this variability became evident in co-speech gesture in both languages. Our findings show that speech and gesture form a tightly integrated system, jointly reflecting systematic differences not only between languages, but also within a particular language.