Numerical size gestures of largeness: cross-linguistic variation and phonetic symbolism of the MAGN-units

This study explores co-speech size gestures of largeness, supported by iconic prosody, and their correlation with linguistic expressions conveying the semantic MAGN-function of extreme degree[1]. According to Mel’čuk (2012) ‘lexical function MAGN[2]’ corresponds to the meaning of intensification and a high degree of manifestation of a feature. The MAGN-function is observed in syntactic units where “the argument word is modified by an epithet or an adverbial element indicating an extreme degree of a certain state[3]” (Krysin 2012: 344) – in the analyzed dataset the MAGN-function can be conveyed within adverbial phrases (AdVP), adjective phrases (AdJP), and pronominal phrases (PP) with semantic elements indicating an extreme degree of action, state, or property, e.g., this HUge reserve, it’s just MASsive, or Ukr. dlya VSIKH zykh kartyn (Engl.‘for all these pictures’). Alternatively, it appears in linguistic units with so-called “fused” expressions of the MAGN-function, like in:

• specific affixes in derivata - e.g., Ukr. strashenno bojatʼsya (‘very scared’);
• word stems with the  determiners in compounds (e.g., Germ. sie hat sich verDOPpelt (‘she has doubled in size’), RIEsenchaos (‘huge mess’);
• semantically related words with semantic component of extreme degree:  “zhara ‘heat’ — peklo ‘roasting heat” (Krysin 2012:344). 

On the other hand the MAGN-function can be conveyed in semiotic repertoires – such as iconic gestures (like hands expansion) that express a huge size in  face-to-face communication and contribute to the creation of “multimodal ‘composite utterances’” (Ferrara/Hodge 2018:1). The semiotic repertoire of iconic prosody could be the next dimension that depicts the “structural resemblance between form and meaning” (ibid.:4). Preliminary analysis of data suggests that linguistic units with the MAGN-function primarily correlate with H* or H*L- pitch contours and are accompanied by markers of the “large vocal space,” such as vowel lengthening, slower tempo, tense phonation, and greater intensity on focused items etc. Other dimension of the MAGN-function draws on the theory of sound symbolism – on the basis of analysed data it was observed that the accented vocal sounds in words with semantics of extreme degree of state convey the meaning big/huge through vowels with low tongue position in languages with different writing systems (Ukrainian vs. English/German).

Data. Into analysis I take the gestures performed by different speakers in English, German and Ukrainian talk shows and TV news when discussing large quantities and numbers, thereby expressing the MAGN-function through semiotic resources. Only the episodes in which the speaker uses the gestures that convey the MAGN function in face-to-face communication were extracted from the videos. The size of the overall data set contains of 300 video samples, 100 samples for each language. The video samples were randomly chosen from the database ZDF news archive, ZDF Dokus and ZDF Reportagen; resources like LateLateShow with J.Corden and some others. 

Research questions. This paper seeks to address the following questions:

1. How do hand gestures that express largeness differ in terms of motor execution in different data sets?
2. How do linguistic MAGN-units correlate with the size gestures regarding their extension over phrases?
3. What phonological and phono-symbolic units express numerical quantity?
4. What are the cross-linguistic similarities and differences in gesture-prosody correlations for syntactic versus fused MAGN-function representations?

This study adopts multimodal interaction analysis to examine the mental number space and interplay of semiotic, phonetic resources and non-verbal actions in conveying meanings such as “very,” “highly,” or “extreme degree of state.”
 

[1] The function was developed within the Meaning-Text theory.

[2] The term “MAGN” is borrowed from Latin magnus ‘big’

[3] The “fused” meaning is expressed by a derivative or is a part of an independent word with the meaning of an extreme degree of X (cf. Krysin 2012).