Abstract This paper proposes a possible mechanism for the transfer of the semantic carrier function from the gestural modality to the vocal one. It is assumed that early human communication had a polysemiotic character: its modalities were coordinated but structurally independent. Image-based semantics, formed in the cognitive space of early humans, was embedded in bodily motor schemes, while vocalization performed primarily signaling and regulatory functions. The rationalization and compression of bodily action lead to the formation of the microgesture—an articulatorily realized polysemiotic configuration that combines bodily action as its basis with an accompanying acoustic projection. The novelty of the study lies in describing a directed mechanism operating at the stage of the microgesture and leading to a redistribution of semantic function from bodily action to its acoustic projection. The integration and synchronization of modalities within the microgesture create conditions for a shift in their interpretive hierarchy. Under conditions of dominance of the acoustic channel, the vocal projection gradually becomes fixed as the explicit carrier of meaning. As a result, the speech element emerges—a sign that is historically bodily but synchronically vocal, preserving the image-motor structure of the microgesture. Gestural and vocal modalities are thus considered not as successive systems, but as historically connected levels of realization of a single image-motor mechanism. The theoretical model discussed in this paper is based on the analysis of semantic patterns of speech elements, interpreted as articulatorily realized traces of an earlier image-motor organization of communication.
Sergei Gennadevich Зайцев (Sat,) studied this question.