Lascarides, A. and M. Stone [2006] Formal Semantics For Iconic Gesture, in Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (Brandial), Potsdam.
We present a formal analysis of iconic coverbal gesture. Our model describes the incomplete meaning of gesture that's derivable from its form, and the pragmatic reasoning that yields a more specific interpretation. Our formalism builds on established models of discourse interpretation to capture key insights from the descriptive literature on gesture: synchronous speech and gesture express a single thought, but while the form of iconic gesture is an important clue to its interpretation, the content of gesture can be resolved only by linking it to its context.
@inproceedings{lascarides:stone:2006,
author = {Alex Lascarides and Matthew Stone},
year = {2006},
title = {Formal Semantics for Iconic Gesture},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (Brandial)},
address = {Potsdam}
}