<em>The importance of considering gestures in the study of current spoken Yucatec Maya.</em>

• Main Author: Olivier Le Guen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: El Colegio de México, A.C. 2018-02-01
• Series: Cuadernos de Lingüística de El Colegio de México
• Subjects: gestos; multimodalidad; semántica; pragmática; maya yucateco.
• Online Access: https://cuadernoslinguistica.colmex.mx/index.php/cl/article/view/104

For centuries, linguistic description has been somehow limited because it was not possible to record audio and video. For this reason, the intrinsic multimodal nature of human language has been left out, putting aside various types of information both prosodic and visual. This work analyzes the ways in which gestures complement speech, taking into account several levels of analysis: pragmatic, semantic and syntactic; but also how some gestures can be considered linguistic signs. In order to exemplify the argumentation, I will consider the Yucatec Maya language using examples of spontaneous productions. Although certain processes presented in this work are specific to Yucatec Maya, most can be found in various languages. This paper first presents a definition of language, speech and gestures, and how one can study the way in which speech and gestures are integrated in a composite utterance. Subsequently, I analyze examples of different types of gestures in various areas of communication in Yucatec Maya, such as deictic gestures, the use of expressive gestures, metaphors and the integration of gestures at the pragmatic level. Finally, I explain how gestures can become linguistic signs in Yucatec Maya.