In recent years, consensus has been growing that certain co-speech gestures must be incorporated in grammatical theory. Contrary to traditional beliefs, gestural expression has been found to be systematic in various ways, to exhibit some degree of compositional structure and to be to a certain extent language-specific. Most current work on the gesture-grammar interface is, nonetheless, rather programmatic in character or lacks an appropriate theoretical framework. This paper shows that Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) provides a promising model for understanding the grammar-gesture relationship in a more comprehensive and detailed way than has thus far been achieved. It first evaluates how a FDG perspective on language structure aligns with the ways gestures have been studied. Then it demonstrates that various types of co-speech manual gestures can be classified (perhaps even exhaustively) according to the pragmatic and semantic layers recognized in FDG. On the basis of this survey, a first sketch of a multi-channel (speech-gesture) version of FDG’s architecture is presented. Finally, some challenges are put forward that arise when taking the multimodal grammar enterprise seriously. Altogether, the content of this paper suggests that a multimodal perspective on grammar can be mutually beneficial for functionally oriented linguists and gesture researchers.

中文翻译：

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同声手势的语法潜力

近年来，越来越多的人一致认为必须将某些共同语音手势纳入语法理论。与传统观念相反，已经发现手势表达以各种方式是系统的，表现出一定程度的组合结构，并且在一定程度上是特定于语言的。尽管如此，目前在手势语法界面上的大多数工作在性质上都相当程序化，或者缺乏适当的理论框架。本文表明，功能话语语法 (FDG) 提供了一个有前途的模型，可以比迄今为止实现的更全面、更详细的方式理解语法-手势关系。它首先评估 FDG 对语言结构的看法如何与研究手势的方式保持一致。然后它证明了可以根据 FDG 中识别的语用和语义层对各种类型的 co-speech 手动手势进行分类（甚至可能是详尽的）。在此调查的基础上，提出了 FDG 架构的多通道（语音-手势）版本的第一个草图。最后，提出了在认真对待多模态语法企业时出现的一些挑战。总而言之，本文的内容表明，对语法的多模态视角可以对面向功能的语言学家和手势研究人员互惠互利。当认真对待多模态语法事业时，提出了一些挑战。总而言之，本文的内容表明，对语法的多模态视角可以对面向功能的语言学家和手势研究人员互惠互利。当认真对待多模态语法事业时，提出了一些挑战。总而言之，本文的内容表明，对语法的多模态视角可以对面向功能的语言学家和手势研究人员互惠互利。