My research interests center on the evolution of language and the cognitive antecedents to language. I am particularly interested in the relationship between gestural and vocal communication on both evolutionary and ontogenetic timelines. My current work explores the relationship between gesture and speech in child language acquisition, and examines the role gesture plays as language moves beyond the 2-word stage and complex grammatical constructions begin to emerge. My previous research involved the study of gestural communication and social cognition in orangutans. By combining results from both lines of inquiry, I hope to identify cognitive and communicative structures that exist prior to the development of full-blown language.

email: cartmill@uchicago.edu

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I am interested in the interplay of language, body, and culture in human cognition and communication. Co-speech gestures are my window of choice into this interplay. In previous work I have focused on: 1) how gestures and spoken language are co-organized at different levels of analysis, from the micro-level of the single word to the macro-level of discourse structure; and 2) what gestures can tell us about culturally variable and universal aspects of conceptualization, both in concrete domains like space and in abstract domains like time. A new line of work examines the role of gesture in reasoning and learning. Is gesture an engine of conceptual change and, if so, by what mechanisms?

email: kensy@uchicago.edu

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My research focuses on the grammatical patterns of human language and the commonalities and differences across grammatical patterns as they are manifested in signed and spoken language. My previous research focused on documentation and linguistic analysis of American Sign Language. My current research investigates the development of home sign systems and emergent sign languages as a means of understanding universal patterns in language development and also the origins of sign-specific linguistic properties. I am also interested in how gesture, broadly construed, and language interact as components of the communicative system across language modalities.

email: nabner@uchicago.edu

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