Iconic Gesture Semantics
This work addresses the challenge of integrating iconic gestures into semantic analysis for linguists and semanticists, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing frameworks like Frege/Montague.
The paper tackles the problem of interpreting iconic gestures by proposing that their meaning depends on informational evaluation, which is formalized as extended exemplification based on perceptual classification of a gesture's visual iconic model. It introduces a heuristic for gesture interpretation that covers kinematic representations, model-theoretic evaluation, and inferential interpretation in dynamic semantic frameworks.
The "meaning" of an iconic gesture is conditioned on its informational evaluation. Only informational evaluation lifts a gesture to a quasi-linguistic level that can interact with verbal content. Interaction is either vacuous or regimented by usual lexicon-driven inferences. Informational evaluation is spelled out as extended exemplification (extemplification) in terms of perceptual classification of a gesture's visual iconic model. The iconic model is derived from Frege/Montague-like truth-functional evaluation of a gesture's form within spatially extended domains. We further argue that the perceptual classification of instances of visual communication requires a notion of meaning different from Frege/Montague frameworks. Therefore, a heuristic for gesture interpretation is provided that can guide the working semanticist. In sum, an iconic gesture semantics is introduced which covers the full range from kinematic gesture representations over model-theoretic evaluation to inferential interpretation in dynamic semantic frameworks.