We are happy to announce a talk by Andy Lücking (Chemnitz) in the Semantics Colloquium.
The talk will take place on campus in IG 4.301.
If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Lennart Fritzsche for the link.
Date: June 25, 2026
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm c.t.
Title: From Hand to Space: Decoding the Semantics of Iconic Gesture
Abstract:
Spatial gesture semantics takes seriously the dual nature of iconic gestures: they are both visuo-spatial events and objects of linguistic classification. The former is spelled out in terms of vector spaces, the latter in terms of classifiers. Linguistically classified gestures, in turn, can trigger the inference of implicatures, as is studied in discourse semantics. Hence, spatial gesture semantics draws on a range of standard semantic approaches, including (Davidsonian) event semantics, computational semantics, dynamic semantics, gesture studies, lexical and frame semantics, and — of course — vector semantics. This raises both concerns and aspirations for a unified formal account. The talk reviews (with a few improvements) spatial gesture semantics and argues that a unified formal account can indeed be given, but only within a rich type-theoretical semantics.