2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

A study on coordination between gesture and speech from the viewpoint of speech mechanism

Research Project

Project/Area Number	19720097
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Linguistics
Research Institution	Kushiro Public University of Economics
Principal Investigator	KIMBARA Irene Kushiro Public University of Economics, 経済学部, 准教授 (80433118)
Project Period (FY)	2007 – 2009
Keywords	身振り / 擬態語・擬音語 / モジュール
Research Abstract	The present study focuses on the link between speech and gesture which is iconic representation of concepts with hands. More specifically, it investigates whether the two modules operate independently during speech production or they are interconnected through mutual monitoring. In the experiment, speakers engage in a description task while their hands are attached to a board and thus immobile (gesture restriction condition) and while there is no restriction on hand movements (free gesture condition). Speech fluency, frequency of onomatopoetic words, and voice quality were examined to see if they vary according to the availability of hands.