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.