Gesture-speech unity

Abstract

Abstract Minimal packages of language embodiment have been called growth points (GPs). In a GP gesture and speech are inherent and equal parts. Out of a GP comes speech orchestrated around a gesture. Can theories of language origin explain this dynamic process? A popular theory, gesture-first, cannot; in fact, it fails twice – predicting what did not evolve (that gesture was marginalized when speech emerged), and not predicting what did evolve (that there is gesture-speech unity). A new theory, called Mead’s Loop, is proposed that meets the test. Mead’s Loop agrees that gesture was indispensable to the origin of language but holds that gesture was not first, that any gesture-first could not have led to language, and that to reach it gesture and speech had to be “equiprimordial.”

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