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Article In: Gesture: Online-First Articles

Pinkie first

Digital list constructions in Brazilian Portuguese

ORCiD logo with link | UFPR
 | UNM
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Abstract
Spoken language lists can be accompanied by digital lists: manual actions by means of which the fingers of the non-dominant hand are associated with the spoken listed items. In this paper we offer an overview of the formal aspects of digital list constructions and their contextual motivations in Brazilian Portuguese. We also describe their discourse functions. To achieve these goals, we analyzed 125 digital list constructions collected from 77 online videos, using the work of Wilcox, S., Xavier, A. N., & Siltaloppi, S. (2023). List constructions in two signed languages. Language & Cognition, 16(1), 57–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar as a framework. Our results show that digital list constructions in Brazilian Portuguese typically begin at the pinkie finger. Discursively, they show that such constructions are used to introduce and refer back to referents, as well as to organize discourse. We conclude that digital list constructions in Brazilian Portuguese share many similarities with list constructions in signed languages, especially in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), but also exhibit striking differences.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Digital list constructions in signed languages
  • List constructions in spoken languages
    • Speech only
    • Speech and other bodily actions
  • Method
  • Formal aspects of digital list constructions in Brazilian Portuguese and contextual motivations for their use
    • Digital list types
    • List-hand perseveration
    • Fingers and spoken listed items association
    • Dominant hand actions
    • Combination of digital list constructions with digital number constructions
  • Discourse functions of digital list constructions in Brazilian Portuguese
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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