So, the question is, where is the negation concept in the surface structure of speech? One may argue that it is in fact distributed across a whole clause, which thus should yield the sync points for the gesture.
3.1 Introduction
The term ‘sync points’ in Stefan Kopp’s valuable advice diverges from the way many people think about gestures. For a long time, we have thought of speakers performing gestures in relation to a single linguistic segment of their verbal utterance, usually a word or phrase (i.e. the ‘lexical affiliate’; Schegloff Reference Schegloff, Atkinson and Heritage1984). This is especially the case when gesture embodies imagery expressed by nouns, verbs, and adjectives in the co-occurring speech. Gestures must be ‘co-expressive’ with those segments and accordingly synchronise with them (McNeill 1992). But grammar imposes different organisational properties on gestures than do lexical affiliates in speech.
Negation may be distributed across a whole clause, as Kopp points out (echoing pioneers of negation such as Jespersen and Horn). The exact distribution of negation within the clause continues to animate debates in linguistics (see Horn Reference Horn2010; Larrivée and Lee Reference Larrivée and Lee2016; Horn and Wansing Reference Horn, Wansing and Zalta2017). But the issue can be simplified for our purposes here. The negative sentences in this chapter all contain a grammatical particle called the negative node. Nodes of negation are explicitly negative forms such as not, no, never, and none. They constitute an observable location of negation and may be multiplied throughout the utterance. Particles are not the only locations for negation though. Nodes project a semantic influence over other elements in the utterance that lie in their ‘scope’. The scope of negation generates the occurrence of Negative Polarity Items (like any, only, and even) and may ‘focus’ negation on to other parts of speech, including nouns, adverbs, and adjectives. Particles, polarity items, and focused elements are all potential sync points for gestures associated with negation.
This chapter posits the grammar of linguistic concepts as an organisation principle for the impulse to gesture. We take an array of utterances with similar surface negation and examine how speakers organise their gestures differentially with the potential sync points in speech. When speakers prepare, release, hold, and repeat their gesture in relation to the node, scope, and focus of negation, they evidence a grammatical affiliation that determines how and why people gesture when they speak. Before considering evidence for grammatical affiliates of gestures, we first introduce the negative constructs we use when we speak and then layout the principles of temporal coordination between gesture and speech.
3.1.1 Node, Scope, and Focus of Negation
Negative particles in speech are like ‘nodes’ – a term borrowed from botany that denotes ‘the part of a plant or stem from which one or more branches emerge’ (Oxford Concise English Dictionary, 9th edn). Comparing utterances momentarily to plants, negation may emerge from the negative particle and spread across the linguistic elements that follow. An initial node of negation may lead to negation sprouting up in the rest of the utterance. This sprouting or ‘multiple negation’ is based on a simple and apparently universal observation: speakers express negation then reinforce it. Referring to the negation-marking morpheme ‘ne-’ at the base of many negators in English, Jespersen (Reference Jespersen1924) historically formulated this observation as follows:
The insignificance of these initial (negative) sounds or weakly stressed syllables makes it desirable to multiply them in a sentence so as to prevent their being overlooked. Under the influence of strong feeling the speaker wants to make absolutely sure that the negative sense will be fully apprehended; he therefore attaches it not only to the verb, but also to any other part of the sentence that can be easily made negative: he will, as it were, spread a layer of negative colouring over the whole sentence instead of confining it to one single place.
Which parts of an utterance ‘can be easily made negative’? Pullum (Reference Pullum2012) observed ‘multiple marking of a single negation at all relevant points in the negated clause – roughly, at all the indefinite determiners and quantifiers, including quantificational adverbs’ (Pullum Reference Pullum2012). He exemplifies this with the hypothetical utterance ‘I didn’t never mean no harm to nobody or nothin’’, where bold font indicates the ‘relevant points’ at which the initial negation from ‘don’t’ is systematically reinforced as the utterance unfolds. Negation has been incorporated here to determiners (no), quantifiers (nothing), and pronouns (nobody). Rather than cancelling each other out, multiple negatives in informal spoken language reinforce each other (cf. I can’t get no satisfaction; Horn and Wansing Reference Horn, Wansing and Zalta2017).
Multiple negation is related to the spread of negation that follows a negative particle, called the ‘scope of negation’. Huddleston and Pullum (Reference Huddleston and Pullum2005) define scope as ‘the part of the sentence that the negative applies to semantically’ (p. 156). For Celce-Murica and Larsen-Freeman (Reference Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman1999) it is ‘everything that comes after the negative particle until the end of the clause’ (cf. Downing and Locke Reference Downing and Locke2006: 25). Constraints operating in scope become evident when we consider Horn’s (Reference Horn1989) finding that some words ‘can only occur felicitously within the scope of negation’, such as any, ever, and yet (p. 49):
(1) He {isn’t / *is} eating any meat tonight.
(1’) I {can’t / *can} ever seem to make any progress.
(1’’) She {hasn’t / *has} been to Casablanca yet.
Words such as any, ever, and yet belong to a category of linguistic items called Negative Polarity Items or ‘NPIs’ (Lawler 2005). NPIs ‘almost always follow the negator that licenses them’ (Larrivée Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017: 456), and they indicate an expression of negation in the utterance in addition to the negator they follow.
The presence of an NPI in negative scope affects the spread or influence of negation across the rest of the clause. The examples in (2) from Quirk et al. (Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvick2000: 226) illustrate this, because the presence of any (as opposed to some) extends negation across the entire clause (as opposed to restricting it to the verb). Extensions of negation are indicated by underlining the stretch of language ‘lying’ in negative scope:
(2) I didn’t listen to some of the speakers.
(2’) I didn’t listen to any of the speakers.
In (2) the influence of negation can be interpreted as ending at ‘listen’, since we can infer that the negation of the subject’s listening does not extend to all of ‘the speakers’ – if she didn’t listen to some, then she also did listen to some. Conversely, the presence of the Negative Polarity Item any ensures that negation is applied to the whole clause: the relationship between the subject, her listening, and all the speakers available to be listened to is completely negated. Scopes of negation thus have a ‘close connection with the ordering of elements’ (Quirk et al. Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvick2000: 85). How the speaker locates the node determines how he structures the rest of the utterance. He will place elements in reach of scope to negate them; for example, with a Negative Polarity Item such as any. And he will remove or ‘shield’ them from scope to affirm them (Givón Reference Givón2001).
The process of signalling elements in scope that are negated is called negative focus. Beyond the placement of an NPI, Quirk et al. (Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvick2000) remark that ‘[t]he focus is signalled in speech by the placement of a nuclear stress, which indicates that the contrast of meaning implicit in the negation is located at that spot while the rest of the clause can be understood in a positive sense’ (p. 227). Examples (3a) to (3f), again from Quirk et al. (Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvick2000: 227), illustrate this with large capitals to indicate the stressed syllable and underlining to indicate the relevant application of negative scope:
(a) I didn’t take Joan to swim in the PÒOL today. – I forgot to do so.
(b) I didn’t take JŎAN to swim in the pool today. – It was Mary.
(c) I didn’t take Joan to SWĬM in the pool today. – Just to see it.
(d) I didn’t take Joan to swim in the PŎOL today. – I took her to the seaside.
(e) I didn’t take Joan to swim in the pool TODĂY. – It was last week that I did so.
(f) Ĭ didn’t take Joan to swim in the pool today. – It was my brother who took her.
Negation from the particle may be applied to whole stretches of language, as in (a). Or depending on negative focus in (b) to (f), negation may apply to noun phrases (‘Joan’), prepositional phrases (‘in the pool’), and temporal adverbs (‘today’). This ‘pragmatic focus’ occurs when ‘the predicate can be inferred to be the case but for one element in its scope’ (Larrivée Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017: 59). The examples also illustrate what Larrivée (Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017) calls the ‘isomorphy principle’, that is, ‘negation precedes the item it focuses on; an item that precedes the negative is not focused by it’ (p. 459). In certain cases such as (f), however, the negation from the particle may retroactively be applied to elements that were uttered before it (the so-called ‘left periphery negative scope’; Larrivée Reference Larrivée2001: 50–1). Huddleston and Pullum (Reference Huddleston and Pullum2002) summarise that ‘[t]he scope of negation is the part of the meaning that is negated. The focus is the part of that scope that is most prominently or explicitly negated’ (p. 790).
Negation particles, Negative Polarity Items, and focused elements lying in negative scope offer one answer to Kopp’s question ‘where is the negation concept in the surface structure of speech?’ They constitute potential sync points for gestures associated with negation and provide clues about how speakers might deploy such gestures when they speak. The bold fonts, capitalisation, and underlining used to track the expression of negation even look similar to annotations of how gestures unfold temporally in relation to speech.
3.1.2 Temporal Coordination of Gesture and Speech
A quick glance at someone talking may give the impression that gestures flash fleetingly in and out of existence. But on closer inspection, speakers prepare, perform, and retract each gesture methodically with relevant segments of their co-occurring speech (Kendon Reference Kendon2004). They may hold, postpone, abandon, and reinstate their gestures as they speak and interact (Cibulka Reference Cibulka2015; Haddington et al. Reference Haddington, Keisanen, Mondada and Nevile2014). Speakers often insert gestures into specific gaps in the syntax of speech (McNeill Reference McNeill2005; de Brabanter Reference de Brabanter, Romero and Soria2007; Ladewig Reference Ladewig2012), or they may start an utterance verbally then complete it entirely with gesture (Olsher Reference Olsher, Gardner and Wagner2004; Mori and Hayashi Reference Mori and Hayashi2006). Speakers often perform gestures in sequences or use different articulators to perform gestures simultaneously too (Calbris Reference Calbris2011).
The rich complexity of how gestures unfold amounts to what McNeill (Reference McNeill2005) has called the ‘lifetime’ of a gesture (p. 34). Kendon (Reference Kendon2004) refers to this lifetime as the ‘Gesture Unit’. It is ‘the entire movement excursion, which commences the moment the gesturing limb or limbs begin to leave their position of rest or relaxation, and which finishes only when the limbs are once again relaxed’ (p. 124). During this excursion, a person’s gesture may transition through a number of phases, defined in Chapter 1 as phases of preparation, stroke, hold, and retraction (cf. Kendon Reference Kendon and Key1980; Kita et al. Reference Kita, van Gijn, van der Hulst, Wachsmuth and Fröhlich1998; Kendon Reference Kendon2004). These phases are like different stages in the life of a gesture – they may all be meaningful in the way they orchestrate with speech.
Since Schegloff’s (Reference Schegloff, Atkinson and Heritage1984) micro-analyses of gesture in video-recorded interactions, studies of the temporal coordination of gesture with speech have focused on representational gestures in relation to their ‘lexical affiliate’ (e.g. Nobe Reference Nobe and McNeill2000; Chui Reference Chui2005; Ferré Reference Ferré2010; Bergmann et al. Reference Bergmann, Aksu and Kopp2011). The semantic connection between gestures and speech determines the way speakers coordinate their gestures to occur with (or even momentarily before) a semantically congruent word or phrase. However, McNeill (Reference McNeill2005) emphasises that ‘a co-expressive linguistic segment might be a lexical affiliate, but there is no necessity for it to be’ (p. 37). Earlier, he argued that ‘synchrony arises in the form of the thought itself’ (McNeill Reference McNeill1998), which leads to a ‘conceptual affiliation’ between speech and gesture that goes beyond individual linguistic segments (de Ruiter Reference de Ruiter and McNeill2000; Kirchhof Reference Kirchhof, Kirchhof, Malisz and Wagner2011, Reference 222Kirchhof2017). The organisation of gesture units with speech is therefore determined by aspects of conceptualisation, or what Langacker (Reference Langacker1987) called ‘the internal structure of such phenomena as thoughts, concepts, perceptions, images, and mental experience in general’ (pp. 97–8).
Conceptual descriptions of the temporal coordination between speech and gesture miss how people organise gestures associated with negation. The gestures may link to speech through a semantic link with a negative form (Calbris Reference Calbris1990, Reference Calbris2011), but they may also link to the pragmatic function associated with negative speech acts (Kendon Reference Kendon2004; Harrison Reference Harrison2009b; Calbris Reference Calbris2011; Bressem et al. Reference Bressem, Stein and Wegener2015). Speakers may use gesture to pre-empt, add, overlay, or achieve a function relating to the negation expressed verbally, and accordingly perform the gesture in advance of the utterance, after it, or as an utterance on its own. Consider Kendon’s (Reference Kendon2002) finding that ‘the head shake can be prepositioned in relation to a unit of discourse and so can express in anticipation the negation that the discourse contains. It can also be placed after the unit of discourse, serving as a sort of ‘tag’ to the spoken component of the utterance, as a comment by the speaker on what has been said’ (p. 180; cf. Harrison Reference Harrison, Müller, Cienki, Fricke, McNeill and Bressem2014b). In some contexts, manual gestures in the Open Hand Prone family may also exhibit such flexibility and accordingly express negation in advance of, after, or in absence of a negation in speech (Calbris Reference Calbris2011; Kendon Reference Kendon2004). In other contexts, however, the way speakers organise Open Hand Prone gestures is constrained by the negative constructs structuring speech.
3.1.3 Grammatical Affiliates for Gesture
As people gesture when they speak, the phases of their gestures inevitably relate to the grammatical structures underpinning speech. Based on the grammar of negation, this chapter presents evidence of grammatical affiliates for gestures in speech and demonstrates how these affiliations influence the way people gesture when they speak.
Negation may be located in a single word, or spread out across an utterance through negative scope and focus. Gestures associated with negation thus provide a case study to examine how the organisation of gestures relates to the organisation of grammar. Our study begins with negative particles, default synchronisation points for gestures associated with negation. Continuing to focus on Horizontal Palm gestures, we first examine how speakers prepare and perform their gesture in relation to particles such as not, no, and never, as these also project a scope of negation that influences gesture organisation. Coordination of gestures with elements in negative scope are then examined, including Negative Polarity Items and focused elements.
3.2 Negative Particles
Negative particles are default sync points in speech for gestures associated with negation, so the position of the particle determines how people organise their gesture when they speak. Speakers prepare their gesture before the negative particle (preparation phase), release the gesture with the negative particle (stroke phase), then maintain their gesture in space as they utter the language lying in scope (post-stroke hold). This organisation principle is systematic but influenced by the content and length of individual utterances, the communicative goals of the speaker, and the dialogic context of the utterance. We illustrate this variation now by examining our corpus of multimodal negative utterances, first those with the negative particle not and then examining no and never.
3.2.1 not (Sentential Negation)
When the utterance contains a sentential negative, the gesture stroke synchronises with the negative particle. Speakers may hold the gesture after this stroke, with the length of the post-stroke hold corresponding to the extent of verbal material lying in scope (cf. Harrison Reference Harrison2010, Reference Harrison2014a). This organisation varies depending on the specifics of each utterance and may additionally serve different functions.
Two examples from the previous chapter provide an initial illustration of this organisation. Recall Example 1, in which the speaker was explaining a privileged relationship he had with the owners of the campground. Unlike other clients, the speaker could occupy a tent-pitch without having to pay unless he actually slept there. When the speaker said ‘I don’t have to pay for that night’, he prepared a Horizontal Palm gesture in advance of the negative particle, released the stroke of the gesture with the particle, then maintained a post-stroke hold of the gesture as he uttered elements lying in negative scope (‘have to pay’).
A second example from Chapter 2 demonstrates almost identical organisational principles, and additionally illustrates the interactive function of post-stroke holds. Recall Example 3, in which the speaker was referring to people who live in foreign countries (line 2), then said ‘they don’t speak any of the language’ (line 3). He used a negative particle with do-support to negate the relation between ‘they’ (people who live in another country) and ‘speak any of the language’ (a property he wishes to negate of those people). He prepared a Horizontal Palm gesture as he said ‘when they’, pausing both speech and gesture momentarily before releasing the stroke with ‘don’t speak’ (line 3). He then maintained a post-stroke hold through negative scope ‘any of the language’, which includes the Negative Polarity Item ‘any’. He maintains the gesture hold as his addressee backchannels ‘yeh’ (line 4), which the speaker acknowledges ‘right’, only then retracting his gesture.
In addition to synchronising with the particle ‘don’t’ and aligning with negative scope, the speaker in this example uses a post-stroke hold to mobilise the addressee’s response, agreement, or confirmation that she has understood his utterance. The post-stroke hold may thus be maintained beyond scope as part of managing the interaction.
The post-stroke hold may also be discontinued before the end of scope. The speaker in our next example again synchronises the stroke of his gesture with the negative particle then maintains a post-stroke hold through scope. However, he releases his gesture from the hold before the end of scope in order to prepare a gesture for the utterance that follows. The speaker is explaining the difficulties of communication in his previous employment that required him to interact with people with whom he did not share a common language. He uses a negative particle to negate the relation between a subject ‘we’ (now referring to himself and international customers to his shop) and its predicate ‘speak the same language’. As he says ‘even though we don’t speak the same language’, he prepares a Horizontal Palm gesture with ‘even though we’. He performs the gesture stroke with ‘don’t’ then maintains a post-stroke hold with the stretch of language in negative scope ‘speak any of the language’. Before finishing the word ‘language’, however, he interrupts his gesture hold to prepare an iconic gesture of cutting related to ‘how they want the food’, which then also transitions into a Palm Presenting gesture.
Example 15 A3b 23.18 we don’t speak any of the language
| 1 | it would always be me and them trying to explain to each other |
| /~~~~~~~~~~~~~*********** | |
| [1] | |
| even though we don’t speak the same language how they want the food | |
| /~~~~~~~~~~~~*********************/~~~~****/************* | |
| [2] [3/4] |
[1] Palms lateral held, [2] Horizontal Palm (PDA), [3/4] Iconic/Palm Presenting gesture.
This example suggests that length of holds may be influenced by scope but also depend on the type of gesture being performed next. Following synchronisation with a negative particle, the stroke can be maintained until the end of scope unless the speaker needs to prepare a gesture to occur with the beginning of the next utterance or linguistic segment.
If there is no linguistic material lying in scope, then the speaker will not perform a post-stroke hold following the particle (unless for interactive reasons as previously). This is exemplified when ‘don’t’ is used as a negative tag without projecting a scope. The speaker in Example 16 is talking about her rock climbing hobby and says ‘I wish I had the time on Tuesdays to go twice but I don’t’. She prepares and synchronises her Horizontal Palm gesture with the negative ‘don’t’, then immediately retracts her gesture.
Example 16 B_T gm 21.05. Wish had time but don’t
| 1 B i wish i had the time on TUEsDAys to go TWIce but i DOn’t…. uuuhm. |
| |~****-.-.-| |
| [1] |
[1] Horizontal Palm (2PDmid).
In this example, negative meaning is expressed prior to the particle ‘don’t’. The speaker’s verb wish indicates ‘an environment expressing an unrealized event’ (Larrivée Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017: 452) and prompts the addressee to build relations of counterfactuality (cf. Steen and Turner Reference Steen, Turner, Brokent, Dancygier and Hinnell2013: 267). This sets the scene for her subsequent negative tag ‘but I don’t’. Because the object of negation (have the time to go twice on Tuesdays) is elided from that tag, there is no linguistic material with which a post-stroke hold could co-occur.
How speakers gesture in relation to negation may also reflect the speaker’s rhetorical aims, and the gesture form features may be influenced by their position among other gestures in a gesture unit. In our final example of not-negation, the speaker is reporting part of a motivational speech that he gave at his local scout group. At one point, he tells how he specifically addressed the girl scouts of the group and sought to elevate their aspirations. Referring to a mural in the scout hut of the sky with a moon, he reports that he first said ‘and by the way girls, there’s no woman ever set foot on the moon, but there will be one day, and just maybe it could be one of you girls’. He apparently then said ‘the world’s your oyster, in fact it’s not just the world now, the universe is your oyster’ (lines 1–3). As he reports this rousing segment, he performs a sequence of three Open Hand Prone gestures. The palm is oriented similarly for each instance between vertical (away body) and horizontal (down). But with each performance it is swiped across the gesture space to a different extent. With ‘the world is your oyster’, the palm is moved horizontally across his entire frontal gesture space [1]. With ‘in fact it’s not just the world now’, he performs a second, much shorter gesture that starts from the end point of the previous one and moves abruptly along the horizontal axis in his right periphery [2]. A third gesture of even bigger spatial extent than the first gesture is then prepared [3] and produced as he says ‘the universe is your oyster’ [4] (Figure 3.1).
Example 17 20.12.2015 MTS 18 37.30 the world is your oyster
| 1 | you know i said the world is your oyster in fact it’s not just the world now |
| |~~~~~~***********~~~~****************/ | |
| [1] [2] | |
| 2 | (breath in) the universe is ha your ha oyster |
| /~~~~~~~~~**********-.-.-.-.-| | |
| [3] [4] | |
| 3 | so i want you to remember that |
[1] Vertical/Horizontal Palm gesture (PDA) from central to right periphery, [2]Vertical/Horizontal Palm gesture (PDA) in right periphery, [3] preparation of [4] Horizontal Palm gesture (PDA) from centre to extreme upper periphery.
Figure 3.1 Embedding of a Horizontal Palm (meta-linguistic negation)
Having used the idiom ‘the world is your oyster’ and produced a Horizontal/Vertical Palm gesture to convey a ‘panoramic’ of possibilities (Calbris Reference Calbris1990), this speaker immediately determined that the global scale of possibilities was unsuitable for the message he was hoping to convey. He thus negated an element of his own speech (‘it’s not just the world’) and replaced it on the fly with a more suitable expression in the utterance that followed (‘the universe’). The pattern of this ‘meta-linguistic negation’ (Pullum Reference Pullum2012; Horn and Wansing Reference Horn, Wansing and Zalta2017) determines the form and organisation of the co-occurring gestures. The preparation and performance of the second gesture is orchestrated with the node and scope of his clausal negation, showing how the embedding of a meta-linguistic negation is verbal and gestural, achieved multimodally. Such manipulation of linguistic and gestural patterns could evidence aspects of this particular speaker’s communicative competence, whose laughter suggests a degree of delight at the multimodal utterance he has achieved (line 2).
Five examples of not-negation have been introduced. They illustrate how nodes of negation and the scopes they project influence the temporal coordination of gestures associated with negation in speech. Negative nodes yield sync points for the gesture strokes, whilst scopes determine the maintenance (or absence) of a post-stroke hold. The post-stroke holds are not co-expressive with the content of the linguistic material in scope, however. They are co-expressive with the grammatical relation between that material and the negative particle earlier in the utterance. Rather than showing that aspects of gesture connect referentially to the elements in speech, they indicate that negation is still being applied, regardless of the specific elements in scope. The way we organise these gestures seems therefore to be based not only on conceptual and pragmatic relations between speech and gesture, but also on the grammatical relations that hold between different parts of the utterance. These not-negations thus evidence how there may be a grammatical affiliation between speech and gesture.
3.2.2 no and never
Briefly re-examining two examples from Chapter 1 in the context of this chapter will start our study of no-negation. The first example is with the negative pronoun no one. Recall how a speaker from the campsite described his preference for activities in winter as staying inside and drinking wine with ‘no one around, you’re just by yourself’ (line 1). He coordinated the stroke of his Horizontal Palm gesture with ‘no one around’ [1], then flung his hands upwards with ‘you’re just by yourself’ [2].
Example 18 (previously Example 7 G_K gm 11.40 no one around)
| yeh | [that’s what i was going to say] |
| [and a glass of red wine] and NO one around you’re just by yourself | |
| /~~*************/~****************| | |
| [1] [2] |
[1] Horizontal Palm (2PDmid), [2]abrupt upwards ‘fling’ of hands (see Chapter 2 for illustrations; Figure 2.11).
The second example that we borrow from the previous chapter illustrates how ‘no’ used as an adjective solicits the synchronisation of a Horizontal Palm gesture. The speaker reported the result of his disastrous plan to break up with his high school sweetheart in order to ‘get with other girls in the school’. Because those other girls were friends with his ex-girlfriend, he said that he ‘was like no-go territory’. He began preparing his gesture with the discourse marker ‘so’, continued to prepare it with ‘I was like’, then withheld the stroke while he repeated ‘I was like’ again. He performed the stroke of the gesture with ‘no-go’ then held the stroke with ‘territory’.
Example 19 (previously Example 4 DLC_5 11.55 no go territory)
| 1 | so i was like.. .... i was like NO-go territory (.) |
| /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*************/ | |
| [4] |
Gesture organisation with node and scope here occurs within the confines of a noun phrase. The organisation of gesture therefore reflects a ‘sub-clausal negation’, where ‘[t]he negation only affects a phrase’ (Pullum Reference Pullum2012).
no can also be used in a way similar to clausal negation, in which case the scope it projects may determine the organisation of a post-stroke hold. An example from an online lecture by Noam Chomsky illustrates this similarity (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tvPkSveevA). Chomsky is responding to a question from the audience about ‘the mind-body problem’. He first describes why he believes this problem no longer exists, referring back to Newton and comparing the term to an ‘honorific word’ (lines 1–4). Then he ends his answer with ‘but there’s no further concept of physical, material, or body’ (line 5). He prepares a Horizontal Palm gesture (2PDmid) in advance of the node ‘no’, releases the stroke as he utters ‘no’ [1], then performs a post stroke hold with ‘further concept of physical material or body’. He imposes three beats onto this hold when he utters the words ‘physical’, ‘material’, and ‘body’. As he concludes ‘so there can’t be a mind body problem’ (line 6), his Open Hand Prone gesture transitions into an upwards fling of the hands [2], possibly a form of Palm Presenting gesture that retains the speaker’s negative stance.
Example 20 Chomsky ML 02.35 no further concept
| See www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tvPkSveevA, occurs towards the end of the clip. | ||
| 1 | there hasn’t been any concept of body since newton (…) | |
| 2 | so there is no concept of physical (.) the term physical is just kind of like an | |
| 3 | honorific word | |
| 4 | so to say that something’s physical today just means you gotta take it seriously | |
| 5 | but there’s no further concept of physical material or body | |
| /~~~~~~**************************************/ | ||
| [1] beat beat beat | ||
| 6 | so there can’t be a mind body problem. | |
| ***********************/ | ||
| [2] | ||
[1] Horizontal Palms (2PDmid) (large beats correspond to physical + material + body), [2] Palm Presenting upwards movement gesture.
This speaker specifies the kind of concepts that no longer exist by holding the gesture after the negative particle and ‘beating’ it with each mention of a concept he wishes to reject – a pragmatic underlining function of a post-stroke hold. The form and function of the gesture occur regardless of the concepts he is discussing. Instead they perform a focusing function of the negation from the negative particle ‘no’ onto each of the elements being rejected. Furthermore, Chomsky is not rejecting concepts in general. He is rejecting the type of concepts that he is arguing do not exist. The way he organises gesture reflects this important distinction, because the gesture hold suggests that ‘no further concept of’ is one chunk, while the beats indicate that ‘physical, material or body’ is another. By beating the gesture with each of those concepts, the speaker indicates to which concepts the negation from that gesture applies. In this sense, the speaker may beat the gesture during the hold to ‘reactivate’ the meaning first expressed in the stroke (Mats Andrén, personal communication).
never is another negative particle in contemporary English. As Cheshire (Reference Cheshire, Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel and van der Wurff1999) has observed, this particle can either occur with ‘standard’ universal temporal reference (‘Sally never eats meat’) or with informal simple negation to refer to the past (‘you never went to school today’), in which case its meaning is similar to ‘not’. never often therefore projects a scope of negation too, so these particles also determine a co-occurrence pattern based on a grammatical affiliation between speech and gesture.
The first example illustrates how a speaker gestures with never as a simple negator that functions similar to not. Describing his research focus, a student explains he is interested in the fact that ‘some people can live in another country for a very long time and they never learn very much of the language’ (lines 4–6). The speaker begins to prepare his Horizontal Palm gesture (2PDmid) as he introduces this utterance with ‘and they’. He performs the stroke of this gesture with ‘never’ [1]. He performs a post-stroke hold over ‘learn’, the brief pause that follows, and very much of the language’, with which he shakes his head [2]. He continues to hold the gesture during a pause after his utterance, during which his interlocutors respond with various forms of back channelling (lines 7–9), including a head nod [2]. Following this, the speaker says ‘right so they can just communicate with things like gestures’ (line 7) and performs a gesture unrelated to negation in which the hands circle inwards around each other [3] (Figure 3.2).
Example 21 A3b 05.15 Never learn the language
| 4 | J | and it’s interesting because i realize (.) some people they can live |
| 5 | in another country for a very long time | |
| +++++++++++++++++++ | ||
| 6 | and they never learn (.) very much of the language [(.)] right so they | |
| /~~~~~~*****************************************/~~~~ | ||
| [1] [2] | ||
| 7 | B | [yeh] |
| 8 | L | [(nods head)] |
| 9 | C | [hm] |
| 10 | J | can just communicate with things like gestures |
| ************************************** | ||
| [3] |
[1] Horizontal Palm gesture (2PDmid), [2] post-stroke hold coordinated with head shake (+++++), [3] inward cyclic gesture possibly illustrating the sequentiality of his reasoning (cf. ‘so’).
Figure 3.2 Post-stroke hold coordinates with head shake and solicits addressee head nod
Gesture organisation here is integral to the internal structure of the negative utterance. The pause after ‘never learn’ (line 6) might suggest that ‘never learn’ and ‘very much of the language’ are distinct linguistic segments (cf. Dahlmann and Adolphs Reference Dahlmann, Adolphs and Baker2009). But the stroke of the Horizontal Palm gesture is held over the pause and into scope, while the head shake gesture specifically (and uniquely) indicates the influence of negation with ‘very much of the language’. This sustained post-stroke hold and negative head shake illustrate that despite the pause, the elements in scope are grammatically inseparable from the initial negator (cf. Larrivée Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017).
Other kinds of hitches in the negative utterance have ramifications for the way speakers organise their gestures. Gestural organisation in the next example illustrates how the speaker’s use of ‘really’ as a hedge influences his execution of a Horizontal Palm gesture. The man is describing a principle of the way he does business as a claims manager, which is to avoid raising people’s hopes unnecessarily when working on a claim for them. He begins to formulate this maxim by saying ‘if there’s any doubt about’ (line 1) but then restarts with ‘that’s why I never really I never say to people on the claims side’ (line 2). He prepares and performs a Horizontal Palm gesture with ‘that’s why I never’ [1], but then retracts his gesture as he interrupts his utterance with the hedge ‘really’. When he then repeats the negation with the full utterance ‘I never say to people’, he does not repeat the gesture. He only gestures again with ‘on the claims side’, and accordingly performs a Palm Presenting gesture to indicate he is adding a specification [2] (cf. Kendon Reference Kendon2004) (Figure 3.3).
Example 22 EC 22.20 never say to people
| 1 | if there’s any doubt about |
| +++++++++ | |
| 2 | that’s why i never really i never say to people (.) on the claims side |
| |~~~~~~~~~***-.-.-.| |~~*****-.-.-.-.-| | |
| [1] [2] |
[1] Horizontal Palm gesture (PDA), [2] Palm Presenting gesture.
Figure 3.3 Horizontal Palm with never interrupted with hedge
The stroke of Horizontal Palm gesture in this example emerges as a feature of the negative particle, since the speaker can perform and retract it before uttering the verb to which the negation applies. The effect is to emphasise the expression of negation at the main sync point, rather than embody the structure of his clausal negation. However, note how his hedge and repetition of the negation are nevertheless accompanied with a cohesive head shake.
These examples of utterances with no and never reinforce the claim that negative particles determine how people gesture when they speak. Like not, speakers prepare and coordinate gestures from the Open Hand Prone family with the particles no and never. The different ways the gesture is held or retracted can be explained in relation to the constituent structures of the negations it occurs with.
3.2.3 Strokes, Holds, Hitches, and Beats
Negative particles determine how people gesture with entire stretches of language, including before, with, and after a negative particle. The coordination patterns between the grammatical and gestural structures may be evident as early as the discourse markers that introduce the negative speech act underway (e.g. so, even though, and but). We have seen how speakers prepare the gesture stroke well in advance of the negation. They synchronise the stroke of their gesture with the particle. This synchronisation constitutes the nucleus of co-expressivity for speech and gesture within the negative utterance.
Yet the influence extends after the particle, because speakers also maintain their gesture with a post-stroke hold as they utter the linguistic elements to which their negation applies. These post-stroke holds are not co-expressive with the content of co-occurring speech but rather with its grammatical relation to the negation expressed by the particle earlier in the utterance. This is emphasised when speakers ‘beat’ their hold to highlight (or pragmatically underline) the objects of their negation. Additionally, speakers may maintain the stroke of a gesture associated with negation beyond the scope for interactive reasons, such as to mobilise a response from the addressee (Stivers and Rossano Reference Stivers and Rossano2010). They may discontinue their gesture before the end of scope because of hitches in the utterance (pauses, fillers, hedges, and restarts) or to release the hand to prepare for a gesture in the following utterance.
Studying how speakers gesture with utterances structured by not, no, and never therefore tells us that gestural organisation is integral to the negative constructs with which people organise their verbal utterances in face-to-face, spoken discourse. The linguistic patterns of negation determine gesture organisation and provide evidence of grammatical affiliates for gesture in speech.
3.3 Scope of Negation
Negative particles are not the only sync point for gestures associated with negation in speech. Speakers also organise their gestures to synchronise the stroke of a Horizontal Palm gesture with elements lying in negative scope. Various elements lying in scope can constitute sync points for the strokes of such gestures. These include Negative Polarity Items and focused elements.
3.3.1 Negative Polarity Items
Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) introduce a salient gestural sync point to the scope of negation. NPIs are items that speakers use to reinforce a negation in the first relevant location following a negative particle (cf. Larrivée Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017). They include words such as any, even, ever, and at all (Lawler 2005). These elements occupy the same utterances as the negative particle that they serve to reinforce, so whether speakers synchronise their gesture with the particle or the NPI in scope reflects the emphasis they aim to achieve with the utterance. Gesture organisation may also reflect the speakers’ discursive aims, for example, to emphasise a negation, to introduce a contrast, or to suggest a particular stance towards the topic under discussion. In all cases, the performance of the Horizontal Palm gesture adheres to (and thereby reflects) grammatical relations between linguistically associated elements within the utterance.
As a first case study, the speaker in Example 23 performs her Horizontal Palm gesture after the negative particle to synchronise its stroke with the Negative Polarity Item any. B has just announced the next topic of discussion as ‘programmes you like watching on TV’ (line 1), when T intimates that she ‘grew up without one’, so for her ‘this is a recent development’ (lines 2–3). B then asks T ‘Do you have a television?’ (line 5). T answers rhetorically by first saying ‘I own the physical box’ (line 6), to which B interjects ‘oh ok’ (line 7), then by saying ‘but I don’t get a single channel’ (line 8). The form of her gesture is the same as we have seen so far – a Horizontal Palm gesture. However, she does not begin to prepare her gesture until well after the negative particle ‘don’t’. Her gesture unit is coordinated instead with the expression ‘a single channel’.
Example 23 T_B gm 05.40 don’t get a single channel
| 1 | B | programs you like watching on tv |
| 2 | T | well I grew up without one (clap!) |
| 3 | so this is a recent development for me. | |
| 4 | now erm on television because that DVDs are everything | |
| 5 | B | Do you have a television? |
| 6 | T | I own the physical box … |
| 7 | B | Oh ok |
| 8 | T | but I don’t (.) get a single CHAnnel … …..uhmm |
| |~~************-.-| | ||
| [1] |
[1] Horizontal Palm (PDA).
Although performed with the expression ‘a single channel’, the Horizontal Palm form of the gesture indicates a potential relation of this expression to the negative particle ‘don’t’. Indeed, negative polarity items such as ‘a single’ are said to be ‘licensed’ by the particles they follow (Horn Reference Horn1989). The precise temporal coordination of the gesture with ‘single channel’ respects this grammatical relation while achieving the speaker’s rhetorical strategy – to say that she has a television, but one without channels. A grammatical affiliation determines the organisation of gesture because ‘a single’ emphasises the negation expressed earlier by ‘don’t’.
The number of NPIs in the scope of negation may determine the number of gesture strokes that the speaker performs. As the speaker in Example 24 repeats the NPI ‘at all’, she also repeats the stroke of her gesture. The utterance is from a discussion between two junior teachers who are chatting about the enjoyable length of their weekends. One speaker uses the NPI ‘at all’ to emphasise how long her weekends are by saying ‘because I don’t work Friday at all or Monday at all’ (Figure 3.4).
Example 24 A_J gm 07.54 P don’t work at all
| 1 | J | Yes, I like the weekends. And they’re long too, like yours … Because |
| 2 | I DOn’t WOrk FRIday at ALL or MONday at ALL. | |
| |~~~~~****~~~~~~~*****-.-.-.-.-| | ||
| [1] |
[1] Horizontal Palms (2PDmid).
Figure 3.4 Horizontal Palm gesture repeated with each NPI
The speaker’s gesture may initially appear to be detached from the negative particle ‘don’t’, perhaps used purely to emphasise the length of her weekends. But by repeatedly performing the gesture with each NPI, the gesture shows fundamental relations to the negation expressed earlier in the clause. The gesture is only related to the expressions ‘Friday at all’ and ‘Monday at all’ by virtue of the NPIs, which are grammatically connected to or ‘licensed by’ the negative particle. The way the speaker organises and deploys her Horizontal Palm gestures is determined by that connection. Briefly compared to the previous example, we do not see different gestures for different NPIs. The performance of the Horizontal Palm gestures is more to do with expressing negation than with expressing the content or form of the NPI (e.g. ‘single’ and ‘at all’).
Another way that the gesture phrase may map onto the verbal utterance is when it is performed in a way that includes both the negative particle and the NPI. In the next example, the speaker starts to prepare his ZP gesture with the beginning of his negative utterance. However, he continues this preparation phase as he utters the negation and its predicate, only releasing the stroke later with the NPI ‘any’ lying in scope of negation. Speaking about his friend who lived in Korea without studying Korean, he says ‘he he didn’t learn any of the language’ (line 2). He prepares his gesture while uttering ‘he didn’t learn’, then he performs the gesture stroke with ‘any of the’ [1]. The entire gesture unit encompasses the entire utterance. After this initial gesture associated with the negation, he continues speaking and performs a series of Palm Presenting gestures as he clarifies that not knowing the language was not a problem for this person. For example, when he says that his friend ‘still lives there’ (line 4), that he ‘lived there for two years’ and that ‘he loves it’ (line 5), he is beating a Palm Presenting gesture [2]. This may seem irrelevant to the negation. But as part of this clarification he then repeats that his friend ‘doesn’t speak any of the language’. As he reminds his audience of this startling fact, he embeds the Palm Presenting gesture in a lateral movement [3], otherwise called a Palm Lateral gesture (Kendon Reference Kendon2004: 275) (Figure 3.5).
Example 25 A3b 21.30 didn’t learn any language
| 1 | i had a friend who lived there |
| 2 | he (.) he didn’t learn any of the language |
| |~~~~~~~~~~********-.-.-.-.-.-.-.| | |
| [1] | |
| 3 | but he lived there really comfortably the whole year |
| 4 | and he still lives there |
| |~~~~~~~******** | |
| [2a] | |
| 5 | lived there for two years he loves it but he doesn’t speak any of the language |
| /~~~~~~~~~~~~******/*********~~~~*******************-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-| | |
| [2b] beat [3] |
[1] Horizontal Palm (PDA), [2a] left-hand Palm Presenting gesture, [2b] both hand Palm Presenting gesture + beat, [3] Palms-Up are brought together then moved out on the lateral axis and held.
The speaker in this example coordinates the gesture unit of a Horizontal Palm gesture with an entire negative utterance. Like previous examples, the stroke occurs with the negative polarity item. But unlike previous examples, the whole gesture phrase unfolds during the whole utterance, so the preparation phase begins before and subsequently includes the negative particle. If a speaker wanted to perform the gesture stroke with the NPI, he or she could just begin preparing the gesture after the particle (as was the case in Examples 23 and 24). So if speakers can begin preparing their gesture at the beginning of the utterance but perform the stroke either with or after the negative particle, it suggests they are able to modify the speed at which they prepare the gesture. This indicates a specific choice and certain degree of control on behalf of the speaker to modify the speed of preparation depending on which sync point she wants the gesture to occur with. Not only is the gesture’s post-stroke hold organised in relation to the negation, but also the gesture’s preparation (along with any pre-stroke holds; cf. Examples 14 and 19, this chapter).
Utterances with a negative particle and a Negative Polarity Item have yet another, perhaps less obvious sync point. The student in the next example has said that in terms of finding quiet places to study she hates ‘working at home’ (line 1). Her addressee asks her to confirm this ‘really?’ (line 2), when the speaker replies ‘yeh (.) I just don’t get anything done’ and performs an Open Hand Prone gesture. She performs this gesture not with the negative particle ‘don’t’ or with the NPI ‘anything’. She performs it immediately after her verbal utterance along with a cluck of the tongue (cluck!) (Figure 3.6).
Example 26 A_S gm 17.28 don’t get anything done
| 1 | S | i hate working at home |
| 2 | A | really? |
| 3 | S | yeh (.) i just don’t get anything done (.) cluck! |
| |~****-.| | ||
| [1] | ||
| 4 | A | well it’s true but that’s why it’s great |
[1] Horizontal Palm (2PDmid).
In this example, negation is spread through this verbal utterance, starting with the negative particle (‘don’t’), then marked by the NPI (‘anything’), and finally expressed through the tongue click (‘cluck!’). Calbris and Porcher (Reference Calbris and Porcher1989) observed a similar ‘apico-alveolar click’ among French speakers and suggested that in briefly stopping the flux of sound, the meaning of this oral gesture can be extended to express protection, refusal, or negation (p. 51; cf. Kendon Reference Kendon2002). Jespersen (Reference Jespersen1924) observed that the negation-marking morpheme ‘ne-’ is ‘a primitive interjection of disgust consisting mainly in the facial gesture of contracting the muscles of the nose’ (p. 335; cf. Lapaire Reference 223Lapaire, Bonnefille and Salbayre2006a). There are therefore three sync points for a gesture associated with negation in this utterance. The cluck appears to operate in a way not unlike the ‘sentence final negator’ observed by Larrivée (Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017) in some Romance languages, such as Venetian (p. 454; citing Poletto Reference Poletto2008):
(10)
Venetian No la go miga magnada no! neg1 3sg.f.acc. have prs.1sg neg2 eat.ptcp neg3 ‘I really did not eat it.’ (Poletto Reference Poletto2008: 59)
The Negative Polarity Item is a tool with which speakers reinforce their expression of negation. If the aim of the NPI is to reinforce the negation, then one aim of the gesture may be to reinforce the NPI, which would reflect the tendency for speakers to reinforce negations in an ongoing cycle (Jespersen Reference Jespersen1924: 333).
3.3.2 Focused Elements
Depending on the speaker’s focus of negation, linguistic items including verbs, adjectives, and nouns lying in scope may all become potential sync points for gestures. These are words that express no negation of their own, but become objects of negation by virtue of the underlying grammatical construct and the co-occurring gesture. Because the grammatical process of focus determines the organisation of the gesture, the gesture consequently reflects the focus operations underpinning the speaker’s utterance.
Our first example indicates how a speaker coordinates his gesture with an adjective to which he applies the negation from his particle. Having described why business people should avoid getting their clients’ hopes up, he admits that he made ‘that mistake once’ with one of his clients. As soon as he has made this admission, he stresses that it was ‘not not in the first instance’. Upon uttering ‘not’ for the second time, he begins to prepare his gesture. He then performs two strokes of the Horizontal Palm gesture. The first stroke occurs in the pause after ‘not’, while the second one is coordinated specifically with the adjective ‘first’.
Example 27 EC 23.24 not in the first instance
| 1 | I made that mistake with Sarah | |
| 2 | Not not (…) in the FIrst instance but I did tell her on one occasion | |
| |~~****/~~~~******-.-.-| | ||
| [1] | ||
[1] Horizontal Palm (PDA).
With his gesture, this speaker applies the negation from ‘not’ to the adjective ‘first’. The negation applies to ‘first’ in order to exclude the negation of him ever having made the mistake: he has made the mistake, but that was not in the first instance. That he did not make the mistake in the first instance is important to stress, because the client he was discussing was an important client. Making such a mistake the first time could have meant that any kind of business deals would not have been possible with this particular client, which emphasises the point of his story.
When speakers list elements onto which they focus negation, they may perform repeated strokes of Open Hand Prone gestures, each stroke corresponding specifically to an element being negated. The speaker in Example 28 has been asked what he likes to watch on television at home (line 1). He replies that he likes ‘soaps’ (line 4). His addressee tries to engage him in further conversation on the topic with the question ‘do you like soaps?’ (line 5). He gives another couple of examples of the soaps he likes, then seeks to clarify his preference by characterising the soaps he likes and dislikes. He says ‘gossipy, gossipy, light-hearted soaps, none of these heavy where everybody dies and they’re probably fighting and hate each other for most of it’. The speaker is listing the characteristics of soaps he dislikes by embedding a series of undesirable qualifiers into the scope of the particle ‘none of’. He coordinates a head shake with the entire utterance and repeats the stroke of a Horizontal Palm gesture with each rejected element: once with ‘heavy’, again with ‘dies’, and finally with ‘fighting’ (Figure 3.7).
Example 28 K_C gm 02.47 light-hearted soaps
| 1 | K | which brings me to my next question what did you watch back home and |
| 2 | C | ER |
| 3 | K | ER |
| 4 | C | soaps |
| 5 | K | do you like soaps? |
| 6 | C | yeah eastenders coronation street |
| +++++++++++/^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | ||
| 7 | gossipy gossipy light-hearted soaps | |
| +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | ||
| 8 | none of these HEAvy where everybody DIes and they’re probably FIGhting | |
| |~~~~~********~~~~~~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~****** | ||
| [1] | ||
| +++++++++++++++++++++++++ | ||
| 9 | and hate each other for most of it | |
| ~*****-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-| |
[1] Horizontal Palm gesture (PDA), with three repeated strokes
The strokes of this speaker’s gesture do not relate semantically to the words they accompany. There is no co-expressivity in terms of lexical semantics (though heaviness, death, and violence could evoke negative frames; Harrison Reference Harrison2009b). More coherently, the strokes are related to the negation expressed by the particle ‘none’ that occurs earlier, which the speaker is focusing onto the characteristics of soaps that he wishes to reject. The speaker’s gesture is both part of achieving this focus and making it explicit.
The correspondence between number of rejected elements and repetitions of gesture strokes is not always so clear cut. The pair of speakers in the next stretch of discourse are offering up examples of chores they like. When K proposes ‘cooking?’ (line 1), B says ‘yeah I like cooking and washing up’ (line 2). However, when K then proposes ‘ironing?’ with a somewhat jocular laugh (line 3), B responds negatively by exclaiming ‘NO’, then saying ‘ironing uh uh and vacuuming uh uh’. Immediately after she has said ‘vacuuming’, she sweeps two large strokes of a Horizontal Palm (PDA) gesture through the space in front of her (Figure 3.8).
Example 29 B_K gm 11.35 No ironing vacuuming
| 1 | K | cooking? |
| 2 | B | yeah i like cooking and washing up |
| 3 | K | ironing ha ha? |
| 4 | B | NO::: ironing uh uh and vacuuming uh uh (inaud.) |
| |~~~~********/*********-.-.| | ||
| [1] |
[1] Horizontal Palm.
Rather than being restricted to rejecting the two items she utters verbally (‘ironing’ and ‘vacuuming’), the manner and extent of the speaker’s repeated gesture here seems to indicate the rejection of all such similar items. The speaker’s expression of negation is undeniably related to the initial negative response signal to K’s suggestion of ironing. The ‘no’ provides a negative framework through which any discursive elements are to be understood. The vocalisation uh uh is made by opening and closing the glottis and, along with the eww! and the cluck! discussed earlier, may be understood as an ‘oral gesture of negation’ (Kendon Reference Kendon2002; Calbris and Porcher Reference Calbris and Porcher1989; Harrison Reference Harrison, Zlatev, Andrén, Johansson Falck and Lundmark2009a). Cohesion still arises between verbal and gestural forms: two unwanted household chores, two strokes of the gesture, and two oral gestures of negation.
As evidenced through the examples in this section, the stroke of gestures associated with negation must occur with the negative node or with an element that follows it, such as a Negative Polarity Item or a focused element in scope. Negative particles impose positional constraints on linguistic elements that follow them, which appears to be a multimodal principle that extends to the organisation of gestures associated with negation too.
3.3.3 An Ordering Principle for Sync Points in Speech
The examples in this chapter allow us to derive a basic ordering principle for the temporal coordination of gestures associated with negation in English grammar. Square brackets indicate stretches of language with which speakers are likely to organise their Horizontal Palm gestures, while bold type predicts location of the stroke based on the presence of elements in addition to the negation in the utterance. Underlining indicates the stretch of language with which a post-stroke hold can potentially occur.
| (i) | [I don’t] |
| (ii) | [I don’t have to pay] |
| (iii) | [I don’t get a single channel] |
| (iv) | [I don’t work Friday at all or Monday at all] |
| (v) | [Not in the first instance] |
| (vi) | [None of these heavy where everybody dies and they’re fighting] |
| (vii) | [I don’t get anything done ***] |
| (viii) | [*I don’t have to pay] |
Based on our examples, this ordering principle predicts that if there is a negative node only, the gesture associated with negation will occur with it (i). Where a negative node projects scope over a clause, the gesture will synchronise with the node and be maintained in space through the scope (ii; cf. Harrison Reference Harrison2010, Reference Harrison2014a). A post-stroke hold synchronising with scope may be disrupted by hedges and hitches (such as cut-offs and restarts), or abandoned early to prepare another gesture. The presence of a Negative Polarity Item may indicate the speaker’s emphasis or discursive aim and attract the gesture stroke accordingly (iii). If NPIs are repeated, the strokes of the gesture associated with negation may be repeated too (iv). Discourse elements targeted as the focus of negation will also attract the gesture stroke, in which case the number of focused elements may determine number of gesture strokes (v and vi). A gesture performed as part of a description of a negative state of affairs to emphasise the categorical or absolute nature of negation may be performed after the verbal utterance, as a summative expression of negation (vii). Note that in (iii), (iv), and (v), the onset of gesture does not need to synchronise with the onset of its main grammatical affiliate (the negative particle), but can be associated with grammatically related elements that occur further down the syntax. Finally, the asterisk in (viii) indicates that a gestural expression of negation that is tied in with the utterance was not found in this study to precede the main verbal negation (such as to synchronise with the grammatical subject). I propose this ordering principle as a grammatical affiliation for gestures that determines their coordination with the expression of negation in speech.
3.4 Discussion
Negative particles are a feature of all languages (Dahl Reference Dahl1979). They constitute a node for negation and exert semantic and syntactic influence over linguistic segments that lie in their scope (Horn Reference Horn1989). These elements include Negative Polarity Items (Lawler 2005; Larrivée Reference Larrivée, Stark and Dufter2017) and focused elements (Quirk et al. Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvick2000). Negation is thus spread across the surface of an utterance (Jespersen Reference Jespersen1924), which yields a number of sync points for the organisation of gestures. What do these sync points tell us about the way people gesture when they speak?
Gestures are supposed to be ‘co-expressive’ with linguistic segments in speech. But a speaker may perform the same gesture associated with negation either with the negative particle (e.g. ‘I don’t have to pay’), a negative polarity item (‘I don’t work weekends at all’), a focused element in scope (‘Not in the first instance’), or in a slot on its own after the verbal utterance. In these cases, it is not the referential content of the utterance that determines the co-expressivity of gesture and speech, but the form and location of the gesture is determined by the grammar of negation. Speakers may perform gestures with negative particles but also with semantically unrelated words connected by virtue of (i.e. affiliation to) the grammar of negation underpinning speech. The way people prepare, release, hold, and repeat their gestures suggests there are grammatical affiliates for gestures in speech. This chapter therefore shows that grammatical structures impose positional constraints on gestures. It also shows how the organisation of gestural units provides a mechanism for coordinating modalities in the case of a concept that is distributed across speech, such as negation.
