The Phonological System Of Rhythm

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 25):

The phonological system of RHYTHM is realised in English through the timing of the salient syllables beginning each foot (relatively equal timing between salient syllables in a stress-timed language like English). In (60), the vlogger beats with her hands in time with the salient syllables of the feet / not /, / find the / and / hair dye that I /. The last of these beats in fact syncs with the tonic syllable hair.

Blogger Comments:

This is recycled verbatim from Martin & Zappavigna (2019). Here are the comments from the review of Martin & Zappavigna (2019): Not Recognising The Function Of Gestural Rhythm.

To be clear, the authors here do not identify the function of the rhythm of these gestures (but see the following post).  In the authors' source, Cléirigh's model of linguistic body language, the rhythm serves the same function as the rhythm of speech in Halliday's theory.  That is, the beats identify the potential tonics, those that speaker chose not to instantiate (select); so in terms of the grammar, they realise the potential foci of New information, those that speaker chose not to instantiate (select).