Does gestural hierarchy align in time with prosodic hierarchy? Another modality to consider: Information structure

This study investigates the coordination of gesture with prosody and information structure inTurkish. It has long been known that gesture has a hierarchical structure like prosody. It is alsoknown that gesture is coordinated with prosody on a prominence-related micro level, but lessis known about whether this coordination persists at higher levels in the hierarchies. Even lessis known about a possible timing relationship to a modality that is also signalled by prosody -information structure. 3 hours of natural speech data was acquired from the narrations of fourparticipants. The study tests the temporal coordination of gesture phrases with multiple levelsof phrases within the prosodic hierarchy as well as with information structural units (e.g.,topic/focus) that informs the prosodic phrasing. The results show that the hierarchy ofalignment is preserved and gesture phrases align with the corresponding prosodic phrases.Information structure units and gesture phrases do not show perfect alignment, but there was asystematic overlap where complete gesture phrases contained the information structure units.Gesture phrase medial stroke + post-hold combinations provided a better anchor for alignment.Overall, the findings confirm multiple levels of alignment between hierarchical structures ofgesture and prosody as well as providing empirical evidence for the claim that gesture isinformed by information structure in addition to traditional semantic, pragmatic andphonological modalities.Olcay Tur