Anchoring, Iconicity, and Orientation in Guugu Yimithirr Pointing Gestures

Speakers of Guugu Yimithirr at the Hopevale aboriginal community in Queensland use inflected forms of four cardinal direction words in all talk about location and motion. This article compares the pointing gestures in parallel episodes of two tellings of a single story, first to demonstrate that gestures too can be directionally anchored, and then to contrast other gestures that are emancipated from cardinal direction. Different sorts ofindexical space and different modes of directional anchoring are posited to account for the contrasting gestural forms.