Background
McNeill, G. David was born on December 21, 1931 in Santa Rosa, California, United States. Son of Glenn H. and Ethel G. (Little) McNeill.
(David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the rela...)
David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, here argues that gestures are active participants in both speaking and thinking. He posits that gestures are key ingredients in an "imagery-language dialectic" that fuels speech and thought. The smallest unit of this dialectic is the growth point, a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage. In "Gesture and Thought", the central growth point comes from a Tweety Bird cartoon. Over the course of twenty-five years, the McNeill Lab showed this cartoon to numerous subjects who spoke a variety of languages, and a fascinating pattern emerged. The shape and timing of gestures depends not only on what speakers see but on what they take to be distinctive; this, in turn, depends on the context. Those who remembered the same context saw the same distinctions and used similar gestures; those who forgot the context understood something different and changed gestures or used none at all. Thus, the gesture becomes part of the growth point - the building block of language and thought. "Gesture and Thought" is an ambitious project in the ongoing study of how we communicate and how language is connected to thought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00W0AAEHW/?tag=2022091-20
( Using data from more than ten years of research, David ...)
Using data from more than ten years of research, David McNeill shows that gestures do not simply form a part of what is said and meant but have an impact on thought itself. Hand and Mind persuasively argues that because gestures directly transfer mental images to visible forms, conveying ideas that language cannot always express, we must examine language and gesture together to unveil the operations of the mind.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226561348/?tag=2022091-20
(Human language is not the same as human speech. We use ge...)
Human language is not the same as human speech. We use gestures and signs to communicate alongside, or instead of, speaking. Yet gestures and speech are processed in the same areas of the human brain, and the study of how both have evolved is central to research on the origins of human communication. Written by one of the pioneers of the field, this is the first book to explain how speech and gesture evolved together into a system that all humans possess. Nearly all theorizing about the origins of language either ignores gesture, views it as an add-on or supposes that language began in gesture and was later replaced by speech. David McNeill challenges the popular 'gesture-first' theory that language first emerged in a gesture-only form and proposes a groundbreaking theory of the evolution of language which explains how speech and gesture became unified.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107605490/?tag=2022091-20
( David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the re...)
David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the relationship between gesture and language, here argues that gestures are active participants in both speaking and thinking. He posits that gestures are key ingredients in an “imagery-language dialectic” that fuels speech and thought. The smallest unit of this dialectic is the growth point, a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage. In Gesture and Thought, the central growth point comes from a Tweety Bird cartoon. Over the course of twenty-five years, the McNeill Lab showed this cartoon to numerous subjects who spoke a variety of languages, and a fascinating pattern emerged. The shape and timing of gestures depends not only on what speakers see but on what they take to be distinctive; this, in turn, depends on the context. Those who remembered the same context saw the same distinctions and used similar gestures; those who forgot the context understood something different and changed gestures or used none at all. Thus, the gesture becomes part of the growth point—the building block of language and thought. Gesture and Thought is an ambitious project in the ongoing study of how we communicate and how language is connected to thought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226514633/?tag=2022091-20
( In this volume, the author deals explicitly and literal...)
In this volume, the author deals explicitly and literally with the speech-thought relationship. Departing boldly from contemporary linguistic and psycholinguistic thinking, the author offers us one of the truly serious efforts since Vygotsky to deal with this question. A unifying theme is the organization of action, and speech is seen as growing out of sensory-motor representations that are simultaneously part of meaning and part of action.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/041571575X/?tag=2022091-20
McNeill, G. David was born on December 21, 1931 in Santa Rosa, California, United States. Son of Glenn H. and Ethel G. (Little) McNeill.
AB, University of California at Berkeley, 1953; Doctor of Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley, 1962.
Research fellow, Harvard University, 1962-1965;
assistant professor psychology, University of Michigan, 1965-1966;
associate professor, University of Michigan, 1966-1968;
professor psychology and linguistics, University of Chicago, since 1969;
department chairman psychology, University of Chicago, 1991-1997. Visiting fellow Center for Humanities, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 1970. Member Institute Advanced Study, Princeton, 1973-1975.
Fellow Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983-1984. Visitor Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Germany, 1998-1999.
(David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the rela...)
( David McNeill, a pioneer in the ongoing study of the re...)
( Using data from more than ten years of research, David ...)
( In this volume, the author deals explicitly and literal...)
( In this volume, the author deals explicitly and literal...)
(Human language is not the same as human speech. We use ge...)
Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society. Member International Society Gesture Studies (vice president 2002-2005, honorary president since 2007), Cognitive Science Society, Linguistic Society of America, Violoncello Society, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi.
Married Nobuko Baba, December 17, 1957. Children: Cheryl, Randall Baba.