From Gestural Pointing to Vocal Pointing in the Brain

Deixis, or pointing, is the ability to draw the viewer/listener’s attention to an object, a person, a direction or an event. Pointing is involved at different stages of human communication development, in multiple modalities: first with the eyes, then with the finger, then with intonation and finally with syntax. It is ubiquitous and probably universal in human interactions. The role of index-finger pointing in language acquisition suggests that it may be a precursor of vocal pointing or that vocal pointing may be grounded in the same cerebral network as gestural pointing. Résumé La deixis, ou le pointage, est la capacité d’attirer l’attention du spectateur ou de l’auditeur vers un objet, une personne, une direction ou un événement. Le pointage est impliqué à différents stades du développement de la communication chez l’être humain, via diverses modalités : d’abord avec les yeux, puis avec le doigt (l’index), puis l’intonation et enfin la syntaxe. Il est ubiquitaire lors des interactions humaines et est probablement universel. Le rôle du pointage avec l’index dans l’acquisition du langage suggère qu’il pourrait être un précurseur du pointage vocal et que pointages gestuel et vocal pourraient être ancrés dans un même réseau cérébral. INTRODUCTION Pointing, or deixis, is a universal ability which orients the attention of another person so that an object/person/direction/event becomes the shared focus of attention. It serves to single out, to individuate what will become the referent. A pointing gesture is most often performed with the index finger and arm extended in the direction of the interesting object and with the other fingers curled inside the hand (Butterworth, 2003). But pointing can be expressed in other modalities. It can for instance be vocal or linguistic. Linguists define deixis as the way language expresses reference to points in time, space or events (Fillmore, 1997). In its narrow sense, deixis refers to the contextual meaning of deictic words, which include pronouns, place deictics, time deictics and demonstratives. In its broad sense, it provides a means to highlight relevant elements in the discourse, to designate, identify or select an element. In French, as in many languages, broad sense deixis can be conveyed by syntactic extraction or prosodic focus (Berthoud, 1990). Syntactic extraction involves the use of a cleft presentation form such as in the example below: ha l-0 03 60 75 3, v er si on 1 11 F eb 2 00 9 Author manuscript, published in "Revue française de linguistique appliquée XIII, 2 (2008) 23-33"