Non-signers favor two-handed gestures when expressing inherently plural meanings

Abstract Sign languages have been shown to favor two-handed forms to express plural meanings, and in this paper we investigate whether this pattern is similarly found in silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers. We use 100 concepts with corresponding plurality ratings as stimuli for a silent gesture elicitation task, in which five hearing non-signers are asked to improvise manual gestures for each of the concepts, and the elicited gestures are then coded for number of hands used (i.e., whether they are one- or two-handed). In line with previous findings from sign language research, we find that the silent gestures improvised by hearing non-signers favor two-handed forms when expressing plural meanings. Thus, we argue that the iconic pattern of mapping multiple articulators (the hands) to a plural conceptualization of meaning is salient in the visual modality, such that this pattern arises from general cognitive preferences available to gesturers and signers alike.