Viewpoint matters: Prototypical vs. non-prototypical co-speech gestures in the VP domain

Abstract

The present paper extends Ebert et al.’s (2020) theory of the semantic contribution of co-speech gestures to the VP domain by investigating differences between prototypical and non-prototypical iconic co-speech gestures. Drawing from Ebert et al. (2022) and Ebert and Hinterwimmer (2022), we propose a formalism where a prototypical gesture denotes an event type which is not interpreted iconically, whereas non-prototypical gestures depend on a viewpoint variable and are interpreted iconically. Moreover, Ebert et al.’s (2020) similarity predicate SIM is spelled out for the verbal domain. We argue that viewpoint is, in the verbal domain, one factor the similarity predicate can depend on.