Cover not available
Article published In:
Anthropology of Gesture
Edited by Heather Brookes and Olivier Le Guen
[Gesture 18:2/3] 2019
► pp. 305–342

Space as space and space as grammar

An anthropological journey through gesture(d) spaces

| University of California, San Diego

Research on narratives in an Australian language demonstrated surprising facts about speakers’ spatial orientation and knowledge both in the insistent use of morphologically hypertrophied spoken directional terminology and in accompanying gestures. Pursuing comparable phenomena in a Mayan language from the other side of the globe revealed correspondingly complex gestural devices for communicating about location and direction but with very different kinds of support from speech. Evidence from a new sign language, emerging in the same Mayan context, suggests that mechanisms for signing about space both resemble and depart from the gestural practices of the surrounding speech community. In particular, they invoke spatial “frames of reference” not used by speakers to sign about location and direction, and they employ signed “spatial grammar” to express syntactic argument structure.

Keywords: frame-of-reference, spatial cognition, emerging sign language, deixis, orientation, Tzotzil, Mayan, Guugu Yimithirr, Paman
Article outline
  • Oriented gestures in Guugu Yimithirr
  • Tzotzil directional precision in gesture
  • Pointing and direction in Z, an emerging Zinacantec sign language
  • Maus cartoon retellings
  • Retrospective summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 February 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.20014.hav
References
de León, Lourdes
(1994) Exploration in the acquisition of geocentric location by Tzotzil children. Linguistics, 32 (4/5), 857–884.Google Scholar
German, Austin
(2018) Constructing space in Zinacantec family homesign. BA Honors thesis, Dept. of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Enfield, Nicholas J.
(2009) The anatomy of meaning: Speech, gesture, and composite utterances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haviland, John B.
(1979) Guugu Yimidhirr. In R. M. W. Dixon & B. Blake (Eds.), Handbook of Australian languages (pp. 25–180). Canberra: ANU Press.Google Scholar
(1986) Complex referential gestures. Ms., Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.Google Scholar
(1989) Complex referential gestures revisited: the ‘iconicity’ of pointing in Guugu Yimidhirr. Paper and videotape presented at the University of Chicago, Oct. 1989, and at the invited session, “The interactive organization of talk: analyses of video tape from five cultures”, organized by Charles Goodwin and Adam Kendon, annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, Nov. 1989.
(1993) Anchoring, iconicity, and orientation in Guugu Yimidhirr pointing gestures. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 3 (1), 3–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1996) Projections, transpositions, and relativity. In J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity (pp. 271–323). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1998) Guugu Yimithirr cardinal directions. Ethos, 26 (1), 25–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Dreams of blood: Zinacantecs in Oregon. In Mike Baynham & Anna de Fina (Eds.), Dislocations/Relocations: Narratives of displacement (pp. 91–127). Manchester, UK & Northampton, MA: St. Jerome Pub.Google Scholar
(2013) Xi to vi: “Over that way, look!” (Meta)spatial representation in an emerging (Mayan?) sign language. In Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, & Benedikt Szmerecsanyi (Eds.), Space in language and linguistics (pp. 334–400). Berlin & Boston: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman
(1957) Shifters, verbal categories and the Russian verb. Harvard University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Russian Language Project, 1957 (also in: Roman Jakobson (2002), Selected writings (Vol. 21, pp. 130–147). The Hague: Mouton).Google Scholar
Kita, Sotaro & Özyürek, Aslı
(2003) What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking. Journal of Memory and Language, 48 (1), 16–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Le Guen, Olivier
(2011a) Modes of pointing to existing spaces and the use of frames of reference. Gesture, 11 (3), 271–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011b) Speech and gesture in spatial language and cognition among the Yucatec Mayas. Cognitive Science, 351, 905–938. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
(2003) Space in language and cognition, Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. & Wilkins, David P.
(Eds.) (2006) Grammars of space. Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David
(1992) Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(2005) Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meir, Irit, Padden, Carol, Aronoff, Mark, & Sandler, Wendy
(2007) Body as subject. Journal of Linguistics, 431, 531–563. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sidnell, Jack, Enfield, Nick J., et al.
(2012) Language diversity and social action: A third locus of linguistic relativity. Current Anthropology, 53 (3), 302–333. DOI logoGoogle Scholar