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International Lecture Series
This regular online talk series connects scholars across both geographical and disciplinary borders to explore how gesture and multimodality shape human communication.
Our regular online talks feature leading international researchers, offering insights into ongoing projects and fostering collaboration across linguistics, psychology, communication, and beyond.
Each session is in English and is freely accessible online via registration.
Upcoming Talks
Abstract
Co-speech gestures have traditionally been treated as an ‘extralinguistic’ phenomenon, not implicated in theories of grammar (e.g. Peter Hagoort and Jos van Berkum 2007). In this talk, I discuss cross-linguistic findings on the coordination of speech and co-speech gesture that reveal clear evidence of language-specific timing patterns, a hallmark of grammatical control (Pierrehumbert 1980; Keating 1984). Looking at data from Medʉmba, Babanki, and two varieties of English, I demonstrate that a) gestures reveal language-specific patterns of prosodic prominence, and b) co-speech gestures, like oral articulatory gestures, show language-specific patterns in the gestural landmarks selected for coordination (c.f. Browman & Goldstein 1986; Gafos 2002; Shaw et al. 2021). I then propose a framework for integrating co-speech gestures into the analysis of prosodic grammar.
Previous Talks
September 26th, 2025
Gesture, Language, and Thought, Prof. Sotaro Kita
This presentation concerns a theory on how gestures (accompanying speaking and silent thinking) are generated and how gestures facilitate the gesturer's own cognitive processes. Prof. Kita presents evidence that gestures are generated from a general-purpose Action Generator, which also generates “practical” actions such as grasping a cup to drink, and that the Action Generator generates gestural representation in close coordination with the speech production process (Kita & Ozyurek, 2003, Journal of Memory and Language). He also presents evidence that gestures facilitate thinking and speaking through four functions: gesture activates, manipulates, packages and explores spatio-motoric representations (Kita, Chu, & Alibali, 2017, Psychological Review). Further, he argues that the schematic nature of gestural representation plays a crucial role in these four functions. To summarise, gesture, generated at the interface of action and language, shapes the way we think and we speak.
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