Speech / Hand Coordination in the Production of Prosodic Focus

1 page Présentation oraleInternational audienceThe aim of this study is to analyze the coordination between speech and manual gestures in the production of prosodic contrastive focus. Focus consists in putting forward (i.e. designating and thus, in a sense, pointing at; see Loevenbruck et al., 2009 for discussion on this issue) a word or a group of words within an utterance (ex: THOMASf ate the candy). It is thus related to manual pointing. This study addresses several key questions: 1 How does the position of focus in the utterance influence gesture/speech coordination ? 2 Is this coordination dependent on the relationship between gesture and speech i.e. on the type of gesture