Gesture in contexts of verbal negation in Chinese

Abstract East Asian languages and cultures are known to show substantial differences from European ones, including in terms of how negation is expressed. The present study considers how gestures relate to the expression of verbal negation by speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Based on around 400 minutes of Chinese TV programs, we establish some relatively stable gestural form-meaning mappings associated with verbal negation. For instance, holding away gestures tend to express rejection , and wigwagging gestures tend to express denial . Our analyses of these gestural correlations with verbal negation provide insights into the multifunctionality of negative verbal clauses when viewed from a multimodal perspective.