論文

査読有り
2020年3月16日

Syntactic Structure Influences Speech-Gesture Synchronization

Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science
  • Kei Kashiwadate
  • ,
  • Tetsuya Yasuda
  • ,
  • Koji Fujita
  • ,
  • Sotaro Kita
  • ,
  • Harumi Kobayashi

11
1
開始ページ
10
終了ページ
14
記述言語
掲載種別
研究論文(学術雑誌)
DOI
10.5178/lebs.2020.73
出版者・発行元
Human Behavior and Evolution Society of Japan

It is known that a phrase may have multiple meanings. Phrases such as “green tea cup” may be interpreted with two different meanings—a “green-colored tea cup” or a “cup of green tea.” Then how people know the exact meanings of apparently syntactically ambiguous linguistic expressions? We propose that gesture that accompanies speech may help disambiguate syntactically ambiguous structures. The present study investigated whether the difference in phrase structures influences the production of gestures. Participants produced gestures as they produced a Japanese four-word phrases. We examined all possible synchronization patterns of speech and gestures. We found, for the first time, gestures tended to synchronize with the chunks of words that form a constituent in syntactic structures. Our study suggests that gestures may play an important role in disambiguating syntactically ambiguous phrases. This could be a reason why humans have continuously used gestures even after they acquired a powerful tool of language and why today, they still produce language-redundant gestures.

リンク情報
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5178/lebs.2020.73
URL
https://lebs.hbesj.org/index.php/lebs/article/download/lebs.2020.73/272
ID情報
  • DOI : 10.5178/lebs.2020.73
  • eISSN : 1884-927X

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