Minimal packages of language embodiment have been called growth points (GPs). In a GP gesture and speech are inherent and equal parts. Out of a GP comes speech orchestrated around a gesture. Can theories of language origin explain this dynamic process? A popular theory, gesture-first, cannot; in fact, it fails twice – predicting what did not evolve (that gesture was marginalized when speech emerged), and not predicting what did evolve (that there is gesture-speech unity). A new theory, called Mead’s Loop, is proposed that meets the test. Mead’s Loop agrees that gesture was indispensable to the origin of language but holds that gesture was not first, that any gesture-first could not have led to language, and that to reach it gesture and speech had to be “equiprimordial.”
1983“Piaget, Vygotsky, and Werner.” In Toward a Holistic Developmental Psychology, Wapner, Seymour and Kaplan, Bernard (eds), 35–52. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Goldberg, Adele
1995Constructions: A Construction Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gullberg, Marianne
2013“So you think gestures are compensatory? Reflections based on child and adult learner data.” In Language Acquisition and Use in Multilingual Contexts: Theory and Practice, Anna Flyman Mattsson & Catrin Norrby (eds), 39–49. Lund: Travaux de l'Institut de linguistique de Lund 52.
Humboldt, Wilhelm von
1999On Language. P. Heath (trans.), M. Losonsky (ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jakobson, R.
1960“Concluding statement: Linguistics and poetics.” In Style in Language, T. Sebeok (ed). 350–377. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kendon, Adam
1980“Gesticulation and speech: two aspects of the process of utterance.” In The Relationship of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication, M. R. Key (ed), 207–227. The Hague: Mouton and Co.
Kendon, Adam
2004Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2016Why We Gesture: The Surprising Role of the Hands in Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McNeill, David and Levy, Elena
1982“Conceptual representations in language activity and gesture.” In Speech, Place, and Action, R. J. Jarvella, and W. Klein (eds), 271–296. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
McNeill, David, and Duncan, Susan D.
2000“Growth points in thinking for speaking.” In Language and Gesture, McNeill (ed), 141–161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
1962Phenomenology of Perception (C. Smith, trans.). London: Routledge.
Müller, Cornelia
2008Metaphors – Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic View. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nobe, Shuichi
1996 “Representational gestures, cognitive rhythms, and acoustic aspects of speech: a network/threshold model of gesture production.” Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Psychology, University of Chicago.
Pollick, Amy S.
2006 “Gestures and Multimodal Signaling in Bonobos and Chimpanzees.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Psychology, Emory University.
Quaeghebeur, Liesbet
2012“The ‘all-at-onceness’ of embodied, face-to-face interaction.”Journal of Cognitive Semiotics 4: 167–188.
Rieber, Robert W. and Carton, Aaron S.
(eds.)1987The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky. Volume 1: Problems of General Psychology. Including the Volume “Thinking and Speech” (intro. and trans. by Norris Minick). New York: Plenum.
Saussure, Ferdinand de
1959Course in General Linguistics (Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, (eds), Wade Baskin, trans.). New York: The Philosophical Library.
Silverstein, Michael
2003“Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life.”Language & Communication 23: 193–229.
Vygotsky, Lev S.
1987Thought and Language. Edited and translated by E. Hanfmann and G. Vakar (revised and edited by A. Kozulin). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Werner, H. and Kaplan, B.
1963Symbol Formation. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. [reprinted in 1984 by Erlbaum].
Woll, Bencie
2005/2006“Do mouths sign? Do hands speak?” In Restricted Linguistic Systems as Windows on Language Evolution. Botha, Rudie and de Swart, Henriette (eds). Utrecht: LOT (Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics Occasional Series, Utrecht University) [URL] (accessed 05/02/11).
Zinchenko, V. P.
1985“Vygotsky's ideas about units for the analysis of mind.” In Culture Communication, and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives, James Wertsch (ed), 94–118. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
Eismont, Polina
2021. Non-verbal Behavior and Its Role in Narrative Production. In Language, Music and Gesture: Informational Crossroads, ► pp. 91 ff.
Iriskhanova, Olga, Maria Kiose, Anna Leonteva & Olga Agafonova
2023. Multimodal languaging: Reification profiles in language and gesture. Linguistic Frontiers 6:2 ► pp. 78 ff.
Rodríguez, Fernando G. & Silvia Español
2022. The Transition from Early Bimodal Gesture-Word Combinations to Grammatical Speech. In Moving and Interacting in Infancy and Early Childhood, ► pp. 207 ff.
Romero-Andonegi, Asier, Irati de Pablo-Delgado, Aintzane Etxebarria-Lejarreta & Ainara Romero-Andonegi
2018. Coordination between vocalizations, gestures and prosody before the start of verbal communication: evidence from the Basque language / Coordinación entre vocalizaciones, gestos y prosodia antes del inicio de la comunicación verbal: evidencias desde la lengua vasca. Infancia y Aprendizaje 41:2 ► pp. 325 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.