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Language in our hands: sign and gesture -

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Fundamentals of human communication reside not only in our ability to use speech but also to recruit our body for meaningful expression. "Language in our hand" project investigates the relations between the body, language, cognition and communication. The underlying question is to what extent our bodily actions interact with language structures, its processing and use in communication. We focus on two domains of human communicative behavior that use visual-spatial modality for expression: 1) gestures that speakers use while speaking 2) sign languages used by deaf people. The activities of this project are also subsumed under the Neurobiology of Language Department.

Our research program proceeds in 4 different strands:

1) Co-speech gestures: What do gestures we use tell us about language processing and comprehension during speaking? To answer this question we conduct research on • Cross-linguistic comparison of gesture use • The development of the relations between gesture and language in children • Neurocognition of gesture and speech comprehension
2) Action, intention, gesture: How do we distinguish practical actions from communicative actions (i.e., gesture)? To what extent communicative intentions (e.g., as indexed by mutual eye gaze) play a role in action and gesture comprehension and production?
3) Sign Language: What role does the visual-spatial modality play in structuring language? To what extent the structures and patterns of language use we see in spoken languages are universal and to what extent are they specific to using either a spoken or visual language? To do so we investigate • Expressions and use of space in different sign languages (e.g., Turkish Sign Language and German Sign Languages) • Comparison of acquisition of spatial language in deaf children learning a sign language and hearing children learning a spoken language
4) Emerging language and communication systems: What do emerging language systems (i.e., emerging sign languages, homesign systems) tell us about our ability to communicate and the fundamental nature of language? What role does visual modality play in emergence of a new language/communication system?

Last checked 2012-01-24 by Asli Ozyurek

Max Planck Institute
for Psycholinguistics

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Language in our hands: sign and gesture -

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