Pointing and reference in sign language and spoken language: Anchoring vs. Identifying

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In both signed and spoken languages, pointing occurs to direct the addressee’s attention to the entity one is talking about. These entities may be present or absent in the physical context of the conversation. In this paper we focus on pointing directed to non-speaker/non-addressee referents in Sign Language of The Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal, NGT) and spoken Dutch. Our main goal is to show that the semantic-pragmatic function of pointing signs and pointing gestures might be very different. The distinction will be characterized in terms of anchoring and identifying. While pointing signs can have both functions, pointing gestures appear to lack the anchoring option.

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