RESULTADOS DE LA COMBINACIÓN DE LAS DOS VARIABLES – COEFICIENTE DE CORRELACION Tabla Nº 36.

Although 10 goal-specific gestures could be created as subsets of 9 of the 11 ambiguous gestures once additional structural and social variables were taken into

account, they should not all be classified as new gestures. If, by considering an additional variable, an ambiguous gesture could be split into two single-goal gestures, it is

reasonable that they should be considered separate, regardless of whether there are only a few examples. However, most of the ambiguous gestures I examined were not divided into two single-goal gestures, but rather managed to have only a subset of the gesture meet the threshold for single-goal use by defining the gesture more narrowly. This narrow definition drastically reduced the number of examples of each gesture.

When there is a clear case that additional variables can account for the ambiguity of a gesture by cleanly dividing it into two or more narrowly-defined gestures, it becomes clear that what was initially considered to be a single gesture was actually several

gestures. However, most of the variables that I identified as playing a role in predicting meaning in ambiguous gestures were, in fact defining only a small subset of the total examples of the gesture, and only rarely predicted a single outcome with high accuracy. This selective whittling down of gestures would result in an over-specificity of the new

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gestures that would render many further analyses impossible by increasing the number of rare gestures to the point where comparison across individuals or contexts became insignificant.

Social variables such as relationship between signaller and recipient age clearly play a role in shaping the meaning of the gesture, but it is possible that these social factors do not influence the gesture as much as the goal of the signaller. The signaller’s goals may change with age or with their relationship to other individuals. It is likely that the gestures reflect different goals not because the gestures themselves change, but because they are performed by a different type of individual. Any discussion of meaning of communicative signals assumes that the signal itself carries meaning. However, it is clear that contextual variables such as age and the recipient’s actions heavily influence the success and outcome of a particular gesture. It may well be the case that to properly interpret the goal of the signaller or to predict how the recipient will respond, one needs to understand the context in which the gesture occurs. The question this raises is: does the context affect the gesture itself?

In English, words or gestures sometimes have different meanings depending on context. This might be due to metaphorical use or common properties in both referents (e.g. “flip” as an action versus a hairstyle). However, in these cases, the meaning is determined by a comparison of the word and context, not because the word itself has changed. I would also argue that a gesture should not be defined as a new type when it is used within a different social situation. It seems to me that differences in meaning that spring from social variables should be seen as part of the flexibility of the gesture rather than as a different gesture altogether. If gestures are defined by social relationships, then not all individuals have the opportunity to learn, develop, or use all gestures. It is

counterintuitive to define a set of intentional, communicative signals that cannot be performed by certain individuals. The goal of developing a species repertoire of gestures is to compile a set of all possible gestures for the species. If social variables are used to define gestures, individuals of certain ages or ranks will need to have different potential repertoire sizes by definition.

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The fact that the measured variable used to determine meaning was “observed goal,” and restricted the dataset to tokens in which the outcome met the presumed goal of the signaller, had an effect on the types of gestures that were included in the analysis. The analysed set of gestures represented only “effective” or “successful” gestures (those that immediately or eventually received the desired response). It is likely that social variables have an influence over which gestures are successful as older individuals may be more likely to ignore gestures of infants or juveniles or dominant individuals may be less likely to response to gestures by subordinates. These effects would have a great impact on the number of gestures with observable goals. Immatures (infants and juveniles) gesturing to adults receive no response 28% of the time. Conversely, adults gesturing to immatures receive no response only 13% of the time. Infants therefore “fail” in their gestures more than twice as often as adults. The clear effect of relationship between signaller and recipient on the success of gestures to receive a response suggests that the set of gestures with “observable goals” may be skewed towards gestures used in certain social situations. Most of the gestures that did not meet the criteria for an observable goal had presumed goals, but the reactions of the recipients failed to meet them. Instances where social variables such as the relationship between signaller and recipient can predict observable goals in a subset of a gesture, may, in fact, be more a reflection of the relative success in achieving a desired response than a real change in meaning. For this reason, no gestures were redefined using social variables. The analysis of social variables was used to inform our understanding of the role contextual use can play in shaping meaning, but was not used to create new gestures.

The strongest case for the creation of a new gesture is the convergence of

meaning of grasp, grab, and pull when directed towards an object held by the recipient. I believe that this is an ideal case where comparison of the contextual use and recipient’s response indicates that these gestures are used interchangeably under the same

circumstances. The three gestures should be combined into one that prioritises the target location as a defining variable over the variables of movement, speed, and force that were initially used to divide gestures. The target location “food/object” seems to only be

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effective in predicting the goal “share” in the three gestures grasp, pull, and touch. As pulling, grasping, and grabbing an object all seem to have the same observable goal, but are distinct from other gestures directed towards objects, I combined the three gestures (when object-directed) into the single gesture “seize object.” All tokens of pull, grab, and grasp that were aimed at objects were therefore renamed, regardless of whether they had an observable goal.

Structural variables were only used to define new gestures if they received an index of effectiveness of .7 or higher. This threshold reduced the number of new gestures formed and ensured that each new gesture is not only internally consistent (i.e. directed towards one goal), but also accounts for a significant amount of the variance of meaning within the original gesture. The only gesture to meet this criterion for subdivision into a new gesture is pull away. When pull away is directed at the recipient’s hand or foot, it predicts the observable goal “stop” with an effectiveness index of .7. Thus, I divided pull away into two gestures: pull away and pull away (appendage).

Low-fidelity gestures

The ambiguous gestures that successfully predicted single goals with the addition of structural variables but received effectiveness indices of less that 0.7 were not

subdivided into new gestures as the additional variables did not predict enough of the variance of meaning. However, rather than assume that all ambiguous gestures did not have goals, I defined a new category of “low-fidelity” gestures. This category included all gestures that were used towards one goal 50%-70% of the time at a rate at least twice that of the secondary goal. This category includes the gestures grab, push, reach, swat, touch, push, mouth, and brush (Table 13).

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Table 13: HIGH AND LOW FIDELITY GESTURES FOR EACH OBSERVABLE GOAL.

The high-fidelity gesture types listed accounted for 320 tokens of gesture, while the low-fidelity gesture types accounted for 204 of the total set of 698 gestural tokens with observable goals.

Observable goal

High Fidelity Gestures

(70% and 3 times rate of secondary goal)

Low Fidelity Gestures (50%-69% and 2 times rate of secondary goal)

Affiliate/Play -Air bite -Arms up -Back roll -Bite -Dangle

-Duck lips open -Embrace -Fake -Hit -Hit ground/object -Play face -Pull hair -Put object on head -Raise arm -Raspberry face -Roll on back -Shake object -Simultaneous hit -Somersault -Swing -Wave -Grab -Reach -Swat -Touch

Move back/Leave -Nudge _-Shoo -Push

Share -Food beg orally -Seize

-Mouth

Stop -Pull away appendage -Brush

Follow -Tandem walk Look at object -Offer

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3.5 Do some gestures have different meanings for different