Gestural Grammar: Investigating Gestures in Southern Italy (GestuGram)
Project title: Gestural Grammar: Investigating Gestures in Southern Italy (GestuGram)
Name(s) of staff/team involved: Dr Valentina Colasanti
Short description: Humans communicate using not only language, but the gestures that accompany it. Gestures are movements of the hands and body often paired with speech, and emerging research suggests that they are integrated with the grammar of language. As a matter of fact, scholars interested in language from different perspectives (e.g. psychologists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, etc.) mostly agree that gesture and speech should both be taken into account while studying language because both convey semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic information. Within theoretical linguistics, only formal semanticists have taken the study of gesture seriously up to now. Formal syntax, on the other hand, has to this point mostly neglected gesture, despite the interesting questions it poses for syntactic theory.
Drawing from the gesture-heavy languages of southern Italy, this project, led by P.I. Dr Valentina Colasanti, aims to address the gap in the literature by developing a grammar of gesture.
Link to main project: https://valentinacolasanti.it/gestugram/