Theory Workshop III – The Linguistic Status of the Demonstrations

Workshop Report

The workshop, hosted by ViCom on April 8-10, aimed to bring together ViCom researchers interested in empirical studies and linguistic theories of demonstration in spoken, written, and sign languages, as well as in co-speech gestures and silent gestures. The workshop focused on recent theoretical and empirical advances in the analysis of multi-modal demonstrations.

The first day began with a first round of short presentations from the participating projects, giving a first overview of the linguistic status of the demonstrations. It ended with a joint dinner at the workshop venue.

The second day opened with a talk by ViCom Mercator Fellow Susan Goldin-Meadow. She presented the results of her recent study with Amanda Brown, Wim Pouw and Diane Brentari. They found that hands are less susceptible to illusion when used for communication than when used for estimation. This was followed by a presentation by invited speaker Rui Lui et al. on experimental evidence that signers and speakers distinguish descriptive and reproductive movements by opposing control of temporal features of kinematics.

This was followed in the afternoon by short presentations from the participating projects. In the early evening, we explored the Taunus together, walking all the way to Burg Königstein.

And since we were still warm from the hike, the evening ended with a friendly tournament at the bowling alley.

The third and final day ended with a final round of short presentations. In the afternoon, the open questions identified during the workshop were discussed in breakout groups and finally in the plenum.
A final exchange of ideas on open issues and plans for future steps concluded the workshop. After this fruitful three-day workshop, the projects now have a much clearer view of the issues that need to be addressed and the approaches that can be used to address them in the future.

(Photos: Cornelia Ebert, Cécile Meier, Theresa Stender)

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