Bilateral account of multimodal grounding of meaning

Abstract

This study investigates how the speaker provides and grounds meaning via gestural repetition and speech when participants jointly establish meaning in conversation. It is found that the speaker conveys new meaning with a different linguistic expression, while the addressee‟s previous gesture for the same reference is mimicked. This multimodal grounding strategy facilitates simultaneous realization of shared knowledge in gesture and new meaning in speech within a clause. It also supports the bilateral process of speaking: The speaker not only provides meaning, but s/he grounds meaning by considering the addressee‟s knowledge state about the reference. Then, the addressee displays understanding accordingly.