On November 30 I gave a colloquium talk at Cornell. It was based on a manuscript under review titled “Anaphoric demonstratives occur with fewer and different pointing gestures than exophoric demonstratives.”

The manuscript abstract reads:

This study investigates the co-organization of place-referring demonstratives (e.g. here/there) and pointing gestures by speakers of Ticuna. Ticuna is an Indigenous Amazonian language with a six-term demonstrative system which lexically distinguishes exophoric demonstratives (equivalent to there far from me) from anaphoric demonstratives (equivalent to there where I mentioned). This lexical contrast overlaps with, but is distinct from, the pragmatic contrast between new and previously mentioned referents. Drawing on a dataset of 742 demonstrative place references, we examine how both contrasts affect the rate and form of pointing gestures accompanying demonstratives. While Ticuna participants pointed with a substantial minority of anaphoric demonstratives, they pointed more often with exophoric demonstratives and with demonstratives that introduced new referents. They were also more likely to use index-finger handshapes with exophoric demonstratives, and to use full arm extension with demonstratives introducing new referents. These findings indicate both lexical and information-structural factors affect the co-organization of pointing and demonstratives.

Read the manuscript here or view the talk slides here.