ArticleFrontiers in psychology2018
The Body as Evidence for the Nature of Language.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cortical tracking of sign language: The role of language knowledge in tracking of different articulators.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Conversational facial signals combine into compositional meanings that change the interpretation of speaker intentions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Visual bodily signals as core devices for coordinating minds in interaction.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- What Is a Language? Who Is Bilingual? Perceptions Underlying Self-Assessment in Studies of Bilingualism.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Multilevel rhythms in multimodal communication.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- A Systematic Investigation of Gesture Kinematics in Evolving Manual Languages in the Lab.Cognitive science · 2021Article
- The signing body: extensive sign language practice shapes the size of hands and face.Experimental brain research · 2021Article
- Disentangling Pantomime From Early Sign in a New Sign Language: Window Into Language Evolution Research.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Deaf sign language hidden in the fresco The Crucifixion of Saint Peter by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis · 2020Article
- Article
- Compositionality in the language of emotion.PloS one · 2018Article
- Constructing Complexity in a Young Sign Language.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
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1 author.
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Abstract
Taking its cue from sign languages, this paper proposes that the recruitment and composition of body actions provide evidence for key properties of language and its emergence. Adopting the view that compositionality is the fundamental organizing property of language, we show first that actions of the hands, face, head, and torso in sign languages directly reflect linguistic components, and illuminate certain aspects of compositional organization among them that are relevant for all languages, signed and spoken. Studies of emerging sign languages strengthen the approach by showing that the gradual recruitment of bodily articulators for linguistic functions directly maps the way in which a new language increases in complexity and efficiency over time. While compositional communication is almost exclusively restricted to humans, it is not restricted to language. In the spontaneous, intense emotional displays of athletes, different emotional states are correlated with actions of particular face and body features and feature groupings. These findings indicate a much more ancient communicative compositional capacity, and support a paradigm that includes visible body actions in the quest for core linguistic properties and their origins.
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