Gesture Resolution and Definiteness
Creators: name: Weinrich, Jonathan
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021
Subjects: gestures
gesture semantics
semantics
pragmatics
discourse
linguistics
SDRT
definiteness

description: According to a proposal by Lascarides &amp; Stone (2006, 2009) co-speech gestures, gestures<br> co-occurring with simultaneous speech, can be analyzed by a semantic formalism in the<br> framework of SDRT (Segmented Discourse Representation Theory; Asher &amp; Lascarides,<br> 2003). Gestures are analyzed by formulas which relate the depicted content to the spoken<br> one, but several gestures may also be connected with each other. One example they<br> provide for gestures building on other gestures is the discourse in (1): <br> (1) a. and [took his] [HATCHET and<br> First: Speaker’s right hand grasps left hand, with wrists bent.<br> Second: Speaker lifts poised hands above right shoulder. <br> b. with] [a mighty SWEEP]<br> First: Hands, held above right shoulder, move back then forward slightly. <br> c. [(pause 0.4 sec)] [SLICED the wolf ’s stomach open]<br> First: Speaker turns head<br> Second: Arms swing in time with sliced; then are held horizontally at the left <br> (cited as in Lascarides &amp; Stone, 2009, p. 400; originally from Kendon, 2004,<br> p. 136) <br> As Lascarides &amp; Stone (2009, pp. 425-427) analyze the discourse, the gestures co-<br> occurring with the bracketed speech segments in (1) described by <em>First:</em> and <em>Second: </em>are<br> connected by <em>rhetorical relations</em>. The crucial observation is that certain characteristics<br> of one gesture are picked up by the following gesture: The imaginary object the hands<br> are taking in the first gesture in (1a) is the handle of the hatchet, and it is still the same<br> handle of the same hatchet in all subsequent gestures which is depicted to be held by the<br> two hands of the speaker. <br> One of the concerns of Lascarides &amp; Stone (2009) is therefore the proper way to<br> formalize when properties of similar looking gestures (e.g. holding an imaginary object<br> with both hands) can be interpreted in a coherent or even uniform way. One other is how<br> to formalize constraints on the coherence of gestures with spoken content. Both points<br> are addressed by the usage of <em>discourse referents</em>, semantic representatives which license<br> the usage of pronouns. The main point of the analysis is therefore formalizing gestures<br> in a way that allows for anaphoric dependencies, the relationship found with pronouns<br> and many instances of definite descriptions. Definite descriptions are taken here to be<br> phrases of the form <em>the NP</em> or NPs preceded by a possessive determiner. The properties<br> of pronouns and definite descriptions are collapsed by the term <em>definiteness</em> in some<br> accounts (e.g. Kadmon, 1990). The term <em>definiteness</em> as used in the title of this thesis is<br> intended in this sense. In a less formal way they can be said to have in common that they<br> refer to given entities salient from context or previous discourse. <br> With the framework of Lascarides &amp; Stone (2006, 2009) as a starting point this<br> thesis investigates two possibilities of capturing instances of gestures involving<br> definiteness: An approach where gestures behave like pronouns, and one where<br> they behave like definite descriptions. In order to provide the necessary background<br> information, Section 2 discusses the nature of discourse referents, how the discourse<br> theory of DRT (Kamp &amp; Reyle, 1993a, 1993b) incorporates them, how the framework<br> SDRT (Asher &amp; Lascarides, 2003) is built on top of DRT and how Lascarides &amp; Stone<br> (2006, 2009) use this background to account for gestures. This background is then put<br> to use in Section 3, which examines the possibility of analyzing the discourse given<br> parts of a gesture’s semantics as pronouns. By employing large monologues defying the<br> pronoun resolution constraints of SDRT and by minimal pairs with speech pronouns and<br> definite descriptions it is established that an analysis as pronouns does not capture the<br> data in question. Likewise rhetorical relations are shown not to capture all anaphoric data. <br> In Section 4 an alternative account based on definite descriptions is developed.<br> After some background on previous literature (Section 4.1) and how to distinguish<br> gestures as definite descriptions from other analyses (Section 4.2) empirical data is<br> used to establish which conception of definite descriptions is plausible (Section 4.3).<br> First it is established that in case of a plural antecedent the gestural data indicates<br> that often only some entities of the antecedent are involved with an event and that<br> every account involving definite descriptions must do so by a partitive analysis. The<br> next part presents evidence that some gestures can only be used felicitously at all<br> if the context provides entities suitable as an antecedent, while others only have to<br> obey a bridging constraint of Lascarides &amp; Stone (2006, 2009). Since partitives do<br> not allow for testing the definiteness of gestures by simply testing if they contribute<br> the unique maximal antecedent as such, a maximal antecedent will be justified by<br> examples where a notion of relevance leaves open important implicit questions with<br> speech partitives and gestural partitives alike. Having established that some notion of<br> a maximal antecedent is involved with the gestures of interest, subsequent discussion<br> allows to decide that the denotation of a gesture should be a contextually unresolved<br> predicate rather than an interpreted version. In order to complete the fundamental work<br> for a definite description approach first steps towards a more formal account of the<br> notion of relevance involved with testing maximal antecedents are undertaken. During<br> the course of Section 4 an algorithm for (mainly definite) gestural resolution is developed. <br> Section 4.4 applies the findings to Lascarides &amp; Stone’s (2006, 2009) version of<br> SDRT, while Section 4.5 makes concluding remarks about the two kinds of definite<br> description uses, attributive and referential (Donnellan, 1966), in gestures. <br> Towards the end Section 5 discusses problems encountered with the account of<br> Section 4, and while possible solutions to some aspects are pointed out, still some points<br> will have to remain unexplained or at least slightly ad hoc. The phenomena involve<br> non-exhaustive inferences with definite gestures and antecedents the algorithm of Section<br> 4 predicts to be available but which are not. Section 6 concludes the thesis with an overall<br> evaluation.