We are excited to share that our undergraduate lab member, Chenyu Feng, has successfully defended her Senior Honors Thesis, titled ‘At-Issue or Not? QUD-sensitivity of Iconic Co-speech Gestures’ (abstract below). In the upcoming academic year, Chenyu will continue her research at Rutgers while also taking on the role of MAL Lab manager. Congratulations, Chenyu! 
Information about Chenyu’s Honors Thesis:
Title: At-Issue or Not? QUD-sensitivity of Iconic Co-speech Gestures
Advisor: Dorothy Ahn
Abstract: This study explores how iconic co-speech gestures contribute to the semantic meaning of a sentence, particularly in relation to the Question Under Discussion (QUD). Traditionally, gestures have been considered secondary, providing background information that is not-at-issue. However, this research proposes that gestures can become at-issue when they directly address the QUD. An experiment was conducted to investigate whether gestures alone can sufficiently address a QUD and whether gestural content that answers the QUD is perceived as at-issue. The results show that gestures can function as primary communicative tools when relevant to the discussion topic, receiving high ratings for naturalness and negatability. The findings support a gradient interpretation of gestures, suggesting that their interpretation depends on contextual factors such as relevance to the QUD and integration with verbal content.