CLASP
The Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability

Turning context into meaning

Some expressions seem to be more context-sensitive than others, namely indexical and demonstrative ones. Both kinds of expressions have a conspicuous commonality, however: they tend to co-occur or even are replaced by a non-verbal act such as a hand-and-arm gesture. Indicating can be achieved by pointing, demonstrating by an iconic gesture. Taking gestures semantically serious, it is claimed, entails modifications in the linguistic theorising on how context can turn into meaning. Based on experimental results, it is – contrary to standard Kaplanian claims – argued that pointing gestures do not give rise to direct reference, but rather serve a descriptive, locative function. This reconsideration of reference has repercussions on the standard two-stage view on deferred reference, which are discussed and tentatively solved. A semantic account to iconic gestures is derived from event metaphysics, leading to “locomotor propositions” consisting of a situation-semantic judgment involving a gesture event and a semantic type. Combining co-speech gestures with plural noun phrases (NPs) also runs into difficulties: NPs standardly modelled as generalised quantifiers do not provide discourse referents (DRs) as requires for multimodal integration. Accordingly and finally, a theory of quantified noun phrases is presented, that provides the required DRs and in this sense is “referentially transparent”.