Multimodality of Transitive, Intransitive and Copular Constructions in Spoken Language

Abstract

In line with the multimodal view of language, some studies found a relation between gesture and a fundamental grammatical category - transitivity. However, previous studies have simply employed the data of elicited narratives, which were unnatural and not interactive, and they were restricted to a few particular transitive and intransitive events. Against this background, this study employs more natural and interactive data – conversations – and considers a larger variety of grammatical constructions which are basic and frequently used in spoken language, including high-transitive, low-transitive, intransitive and copular constructions. Specifically, using a large amount of conversational data from the Red Hen database, this study examines the use of gestures accompanying the four constructions, and the question to what extent the gestures preferred relate to the ways of conceptualizing these constructions. Results indicate that the use of gestures accompanying the four constructions shows distinctions in the ways in which speakers conceptualize these constructions. These results suggest that these constructions seem to be multimodal in nature, which provides further empirical support for the multimodal stance that gesture is part of language.