Why in Spanish “nos ponemos contentos” but not “satisfechos”:a cognitive-linguistic review of the“change-of-state verb ponerse+adjective” construction

Constructionist approaches to language have often viewed metaphorsand metonymies either as motivating factors or constraints on lexical-constructional integration (Goldberg 1995, 2006; the Lexical-ConstructionalModel: Butler & Gonz alvez 2014, Gonz alvez 2020, Ruiz de Mendoza &Mairal 2008, Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera 2014). In a similar spirit, the presentarticle provides a detailed study of the role of metaphor in the analysis of theSpanish resultative change-of-state construction “ponerse (‘put CL’)+adjective”by examining a list of metaphorical motion constructions of this kind, which arefrequent in everyday language when describing temporary arousal states. Bypaying special attention to constraints in its lexical and constructional structure,we aim to examine whether the metaphorA CHANGE OF TEMPORARY STATE IS ACHANGE OF TEMPORARY LOCATIONis attested in this type of construction in theSpanish language (i.e., whether it plays a role and, if so, of what kind). It ispresumed that the metaphors under analysis in connection to “ponerse+adjective” constructions systematically motivate the meaning of this change-of-state verb in Spanish when coappearing with an evaluative adjective, as long asthe fact that the latter profiles a normally temporary (short duration) arousalstat

Breaking the Rules by Bending the Form: Iconic Modification in American Sign Language and Silent Gesture

Language is traditionally characterized as an arbitrary, symbolic system, made up of discrete, categorical forms. But iconicity and gradience are pervasive in communication. For example, in spoken languages, word forms can be “played with” in iconic gradient ways by varying vowel length, pitch, or speed (e.g., “It’s been a loooooooong day”). These instances of depiction have been called “vocal gesture”. However, little is known about this process in sign languages, wherein both linguistic and gestural representations exist within the same modality . In this work we explore the gradient use of motion in American Sign Language (ASL) and silent gesture. In Study 1 we asked deaf signers of ASL (n = 11) to describe an event manipulated along speed, direction, or path, and observed their use of gradient modification in arbitrary and iconic signs. We found that signers alter the forms of both lexical and depicting signs to enhance meaning. However, the three motion dimensions were not modified equally in lexical signs, suggesting constraints on gradient modification. These constraints may be linguistic in nature, followed only by signers who know ASL or another sign language, or they may be a feature of manual or gestural communication more broadly. To test, in Study 2 we compared the ASL signers to English-speakers (n=11) asked to communicate silently using gesture. As in Study 1, the silent gesturers are given an ASL verb and asked to use it to describe a target event and three variants. We observe whether the target verb is modified to depict the variants. We find both similarities and differences between the groups. The groups are both influenced by the iconicity of these signs, suggesting that intuitions about modification may incorporate some gestural knowledge, since silent gesturers, unfamiliar with ASL, can generate them. However, the groups differed in their overall tendency to modify, as well as their treatment of the different dimensions of movement, indicating that there is more to these modifications than iconicity, and illustrating how iconicity and arbitrariness work together in linguistic system. In Study 3, we test deaf children using ASL (n=38) as well as hearing English-speaking children using silent gesture (n=15) on an adapted version of this paradigm. We find that these intuitions regarding how modification fits within the phonological constraints of ASL emerge early in development for children acquiring a sign language, but these patterns are not shared by children for whom manual communication is not linguistic (silent gesturers)

Gesture and Speech in Interaction - 4th edition (GESPIN 4)

International audienceThe fourth edition of Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN) was held in Nantes, France. With more than 40 papers, these proceedings show just what a flourishing field of enquiry gesture studies continues to be. The keynote speeches of the conference addressed three different aspects of multimodal interaction:gesture and grammar, gesture acquisition, and gesture and social interaction. In a talk entitled Qualitiesof event construal in speech and gesture: Aspect and tense, Alan Cienki presented an ongoing researchproject on narratives in French, German and Russian, a project that focuses especially on the verbal andgestural expression of grammatical tense and aspect in narratives in the three languages. Jean-MarcColletta's talk, entitled Gesture and Language Development: towards a unified theoretical framework,described the joint acquisition and development of speech and early conventional and representationalgestures. In Grammar, deixis, and multimodality between code-manifestation and code-integration or whyKendon's Continuum should be transformed into a gestural circle, Ellen Fricke proposed a revisitedgrammar of noun phrases that integrates gestures as part of the semiotic and typological codes of individuallanguages. From a pragmatic and cognitive perspective, Judith Holler explored the use ofgaze and hand gestures as means of organizing turns at talk as well as establishing common ground in apresentation entitled On the pragmatics of multi-modal face-to-face communication: Gesture, speech andgaze in the coordination of mental states and social interaction.Among the talks and posters presented at the conference, the vast majority of topics related, quitenaturally, to gesture and speech in interaction - understood both in terms of mapping of units in differentsemiotic modes and of the use of gesture and speech in social interaction. Several presentations explored the effects of impairments(such as diseases or the natural ageing process) on gesture and speech. The communicative relevance ofgesture and speech and audience-design in natural interactions, as well as in more controlled settings liketelevision debates and reports, was another topic addressed during the conference. Some participantsalso presented research on first and second language learning, while others discussed the relationshipbetween gesture and intonation. While most participants presented research on gesture and speech froman observer's perspective, be it in semiotics or pragmatics, some nevertheless focused on another importantaspect: the cognitive processes involved in language production and perception. Last but not least,participants also presented talks and posters on the computational analysis of gestures, whether involvingexternal devices (e.g. mocap, kinect) or concerning the use of specially-designed computer software forthe post-treatment of gestural data. Importantly, new links were made between semiotics and mocap data

CYCLIC GESTURES AND MULTIMODAL SYMBOLIC ASSEMBLIES: AN ARGUMENT FOR SYMBOLIC COMPLEXITY IN GESTURE

In this dissertation, I seek to better understand the nature of the relationship between meanings expressed in gesture and those expressed in speech. This research focuses on the use of cyclic gestures in English. Cyclic gestures are manual co-speech gestures that are characterized by a circular movement of the hand or arm. Despite cyclic gestures being commonplace in many types of spoken discourse, no previous studies to date have specifically explored the functions these gestures serve in English. Broadly, this dissertation addresses two questions: (1) What functions do cyclic gestures serve in interaction in English, and (2) how are cyclic gestures integrated with other meaningful units in multimodal expressions? Using data collected from television talk shows, I examine the functional-semantic properties of spoken language expressions that accompany cyclic gestures and identify properties of meaning that repeatedly align with the expression of the gestures. I also explore relationships between fine-grained formal properties of cyclic gestural expressions and functional-semantic properties of the co-expressed speech. The results of the study find a number of significant relationships between gesture forms and spoken language meanings. For example, when cyclic gestures were expressed with spoken constructions serving an evaluative function, they were significantly associated with bimanual asynchronous rotations and finger spreading (p \u3c .001) with a moderately strong effect size (φc = 0.26). Drawing on the patterns identified in the analysis of the data, I analyze cyclic gestures as component symbolic structures that profile schematic processes. I argue that formal properties that accompany cyclic movement gestures (e.g., handshapes and locations of the hands in space) have the potential to be meaningful. Data from English suggest that cyclic gestures can integrate simultaneously with other symbolic structures in gesture to form complex gestural expressions (i.e., symbolic assemblies). Extending theoretical tools from the framework of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 1987, 1991), I explore how the schematic meaning of cyclic gestures is instantiated in specific complex gestural expressions and how those gestural constructions interact with symbolic structures in speech. This work challenges traditional assumptions about the nature of gesture meaning, which treats gestures as simplex, holistic structures. Instead, the findings of this research suggest that gestures are best analyzed as constructions

Use of sign space

This chapter focuses on the semantic and pragmatic uses of space. The questions addressed concern how sign space (i.e. the area of space in front of the signer’s body) is used for meaning construction, how locations in sign space are associated with discourse referents, and how signers choose to structure sign space for their communicative intents. The chapter gives an overview of linguistic analyses of the use of space, starting with the distinction between syntactic and topographic uses of space and the different types of signs that function to establish referent-location associations, and moving to analyses based on mental spaces and conceptual blending theories. Semantic-pragmatic conventions for organizing sign space are discussed, as well as spatial devices notable in the visual-spatial modality (particularly, classifier predicates and signing perspective), which influence and determine the way meaning is created in sign space. Finally, the special role of simultaneity in sign languages is discussed, focusing on the semantic and discourse-pragmatic functions of simultaneous constructions

Situation models and children’s reading comprehension: what role does visual imagery play?

Individual differences in children’s reading comprehension have been attributed to the level at which a reader is able to construct a coherent meaning-based mental representation of the situation described in a text (i.e., a “situation model”). However, although there is evidence that situation models contain perceptual information such as visual imagery, it is yet to be established whether visual imagery contributes to children’s reading comprehension via its role in situation model construction. To investigate this, three studies were conducted with children in Grades 4 and 5 (age range: 8.08-11.17 years) as part of the current thesis. Study 1 explored the utility of several measures of visual imagery and examined whether this construct is best captured by the differentiation of separate visual imagery processes in this younger population. Fifty-nine children completed five measures of visual imagery, each designed to capture a distinct subcomponent of the visual imagery system, including image generation, image maintenance, image scanning, image transformation, and image strength/vividness. It was found that the visual imagery measures were not highly related to one another and thus each represented a unique construct. However, not all of the included measures proved to be valid and reliable. Utilising the measures of visual imagery that were found to have adequate psychometric properties in Study 1, Study 2 then examined the influence of different subtypes of visual imagery (image maintenance, image scanning and image transformation) on individual differences in reading comprehension. In addition, this study further investigated existing criticisms that traditional measures of reading comprehension do not capture all of the skills involved in situation model construction, by including two separate measures of reading comprehension: a traditional standardised measure (the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability), and a newer measure designed from cognitive theory, which measures higher-level comprehension processes separate to the effects of lower-level reading ability (the Diagnostic Assessment of Reading Comprehension; DARC). It was found that each subtype of visual imagery differentially predicted reading comprehension. In addition, each measure of reading comprehension was differentially influenced by variations in word reading ability and verbal working memory, with evidence that the Neale was more influenced by lower-level reading skills and simple verbal working memory, whereas the DARC was more influenced by non-verbal reasoning and complex verbal working memory. However, visual imagery was not found to be a reliable predictor of reading comprehension; although, this may have been due to an incongruity between the type of imagery that occurs during objective tasks of visual imagery and the visual simulation of narrative events. Thus, Study 3 was designed to disrupt good and poor comprehenders’ visual imagery during reading in order to determine whether good comprehenders show more reliance on visual imagery during comprehension than poor comprehenders. Unexpectedly, however, good comprehenders showed limited evidence of engaging in higher-level comprehension processes (i.e., predictive inferencing) even when imagery was not impaired. Despite this, important implications regarding the use of both textbase and imagery-based representations were revealed, as poor comprehenders displayed increased difficulty maintaining a verbal load during reading compared to a visuospatial load. This suggests that in comparison to good comprehenders, poor comprehenders may have a greater reliance on textbase over imagery-based representations during reading. Overall, this thesis adds to the literature that suggests not all reading comprehension measures are interchangeable in regard s to the underlying skills that they measure. Further, visual imagery may be relevant to reading comprehension; yet, it is likely that this relationship will be further established through careful conceptualisation and measurement of visual imagery versus visual simulation. These findings have implications regarding the use of existing comprehension measures in research and practice, and may also aid future research that investigates the role of visual imagery in higher-level comprehension processes

What Is Cognitive Psychology?

What Is Cognitive Psychology? identifies the theoretical foundations of cognitive psychology—foundations which have received very little attention in modern textbooks. Beginning with the basics of information processing, Michael R. W. Dawson explores what experimental psychologists infer about these processes and considers what scientific explanations are required when we assume cognition is rule-governed symbol manipulation. From these foundations, psychologists can identify the architecture of cognition and better understand its role in debates about its true nature. This volume offers a deeper understanding of cognitive psychology and presents ideas for integrating traditional cognitive psychology with more modern fields like cognitive neuroscience.Publishe

Toward a more embedded/extended perspective on the cognitive function of gestures

Gestures are often considered to be demonstrative of the embodied nature of the mind (Hostetter and Alibali, 2008). In this article, we review current theories and research targeted at the intra-cognitive role of gestures. We ask the question how can gestures support internal cognitive processes of the gesturer? We suggest that extant theories are in a sense disembodied, because they focus solely on embodiment in terms of the sensorimotor neural precursors of gestures. As a result, current theories on the intra-cognitive role of gestures are lacking in explanatory scope to address how gestures-as-bodily-acts fulfill a cognitive function. On the basis of recent theoretical appeals that focus on the possibly embedded/extended cognitive role of gestures (Clark, 2013), we suggest that gestures are external physical tools of the cognitive system that replace and support otherwise solely internal cognitive processes. That is gestures provide the cognitive system with a stable external physical and visual presence that can provide means to think with. We show that there is a considerable amount of overlap between the way the human cognitive system has been found to use its environment, and how gestures are used during cognitive processes. Lastly, we provide several suggestions of how to investigate the embedded/extended perspective of the cognitive function of gestures

Gestures and metaphor - evidence for gestures' self-oriented functions and hemispheric involvement for speech production

The current thesis investigates the link between gestures and metaphor. In Chapter 3, we investigated whether left-hand gestures improve metaphor explanation compared to right-hand gestures or not gesturing at all. Additionally, we collected individual measurements for hemispheric involvement during speech production using the mouth asymmetry technique. We found a left-over-right hand gesturing advantage, which was higher for those with stronger right hemispheric involvement during speech production. This finding suggested that gestures’ self-oriented functions are hemisphere specific. In Chapter 4, we investigated whether left-hand gestures rather than taps trigger metaphorical language use. We found no such evidence, but we found that gestures compared to taps increased the number of words uttered, which in turn led to the use of more metaphors. This points towards gestures’ facilitative effect on speech production, but further research is needed to pin-point exactly what process is facilitated. In Chapter 5, we investigated whether gestures with a particular hand, when produced without speech, prime semantic categorisation of sentences (metaphorical and literal). We found no evidence for priming effects, and further research is needed to examine the effects that gestures, when produced alone might have on semantic processing. Finally, in Chapter 6 we found that producing content compared to function words, makes metaphor processing right hemisphere specific. This indicated that semantic processing is the key to the lateralisation of metaphor processing. The results validated the use of the mouth asymmetry technique as an indirect measurement of hemispheric involvement during speech production tasks