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Language from gesture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2005

Sherman Wilcox*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM87131http://www.unm.edu/~wilcox

Abstract:

The hypothesis that language began as a multimodal, gestural complex finds support in data from spoken languages on the connection between intonation and gesture, as well as from the process by which intonation becomes codified into grammar. Also, data from signed languages show a similar process at work, in which gestural elements become incorporated as intonation and conventionalized as grammatical markers.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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References

Notes

I regard the issue of whether the signals are intentionally communicative to be a separate issue because unintentional signals may acquire communicative import.