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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2022
Edited by Jorrig Vogels and Sterre Leufkens
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 39] 2022
► pp. 225–239

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Integrating deictic co-speech gestures in demonstrative forms

 | Utrecht University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Utrecht University.

Published online: 4 November 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00071.ter
Abstract
Deictic co-speech gestures (DCSGs) are commonly regarded as intimately related to exophoric demonstrative forms; yet, no account is available that formalises this relation. This paper proposes that DCSGs spell-out part of the internal structure of exophoric demonstratives: concretely, they contribute the spatial coordinates (direction and distance, syntactically encoded by the Demonstrative ‘Dem’ head and by a Measure Phrase ‘MeasP’ that modifies it, respectively) that identify the location of the demonstrative’s referent and the deictic centre. This naturally captures the intuition that exophoric demonstratives and DCSGs are related, under a multi-modal spell-out approach to demonstrative forms. Further, this proposal is compatible with independent facts regarding both the grammaticalisation of demonstrative forms and their acquisition.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Deictic co-speech gestures
  • 3.Assumptions: DemP’s internal structure
    • 3.1Person features
    • 3.2DemP’s internal structure
  • 4.Proposal: Dem + MeasP ⇔ DCSGs
  • 5.Extensions
    • 5.1DCSGs, endophoricity, and diachrony
    • 5.2DCSGs and acquisition
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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