How speakers gesture when encoding location with English on and French sur

This paper examines how speakers gesture when using English on and French sur (’on’) to encode location. These prepositions encode locative configurations in which the object being located is in physical contact with the reference object, and/or in which the reference object functions as a supporting surface for the object being located (Coventry and Garrod, 2004, Herskovits, 1986, Vandeloise, 1986 and Borillo, 1998). Drawing on a filmed experiment in which native speakers of English and native speakers of French described two spatial scenes to a partner, we show that speakers do not express these ideas of contact or locative support in co-speech gestures. Rather, speakers use gesture to express directional information that establishes the location of the lexicalised topological configuration in space. Gesture therefore adds a complementary layer of meaning to the locative relationships encoded by sur and on. We discusses the possible reasons behind this finding, and ultimately conclude that gesture's role in the communication of location is tightly linked to the expression of directional, as opposed to topological, information.

► We examine speakers’ use of on and sur (‘on’) to encode static location.
► Speakers’ gestures localise the topological configuration in space.
► English and French speakers make very similar use of gesture with on and sur.
► Speech and gesture present different, although related, strands of meaning.