Seminar | Is vision necessary for the timely acquisition of language-specific patterns in co-speech gesture and their lack in silent gesture?
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Date
10 Apr 2025
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Organiser
Department of English and Communication
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Time
19:30 - 20:30
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Venue
Online via Zoom
Speaker
Prof. Şeyda Özçalışkan
Summary
Sighted speakers of different languages vary systematically in how they package components of a motion event in speech. These differences influence the organization of semantic elements in gesture, but only when gestures are produced with speech (co-speech gesture), not without speech (silent gesture). What explains the emergence of cross-linguistic differences in co-speech gesture and cross-linguistic similarities in silent gesture? In this talk, I address this question by focusing on congenitally blind speakers of structurally different languages who have never seen others gesture. I ask whether the (timely) onset of language-specific patterns in co-speech gesture, and the lack of such patterns in silent gesture, are both affected by the ability to see others gesture.
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Şeyda Özçalışkan
Professor of Psychology, Psychology Department, Georgia State University, Atlanta
Şeyda Özçalışkan received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Chicago. She is currently working as a Professor of Psychology in the Psychology Department at Georgia State University, Atlanta. Her work focuses on the process of language and cognitive development and how gesture serves as part of the mechanism of change in this process across different learners and learning environments.
