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. 2017 Oct 30;8:1894. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01894

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Copyright © 2017 Brown.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Prosody and gesture compared. The figure shows parallel gestural and vocal routes to the origin of language by means of either gestural symbols (sign language) or acoustic symbols (speech). The pantomime stage in the middle of both routes is one of iconic representation. The term “acoustic pantomime” refers to iconic words (onomatopoieas) and so-called sound symbolisms. The dashed arrow in the second row suggests that, compared to the more natural relationship between gesture's spatiality and visual pantomimes, the connection between prosody's conveyance of consequentiality and acoustic pantomimes is more remote.