Abstract
Beat gestures, or "batons", have been traditionally regarded as the least "semantic" class of co-speech gestures (Kendon, 1988, McNeill, 1992). Taken as mere involuntary movements accompanying production of spoken language, their relation to language has been often limited to phonological aspects: rhythm or prosody in general.
The fundamental association of beat gestures with prosody has been acknowledged since the very beginning of linguistic interest in gesture (e.g. Pike, 1967).
Closely linked to prosody is another widely recognized function of beat gestures - discourse marking. As prosody serves as a marker of distinction between discursive units (information structure), so may gesture (Kendon, 1972).
Our paper focuses on a) what roles beat gestures take on when co-occurring with the spontaneously produced language in interaction, and b) the usefulness of distinguishing between the canonical co-speech gesture categories (beats, iconic, deictic, metaphoric gestures) with respect to their functions.