This chapter reviews the relation between gesture and the natural signed languages of deaf communities. Signs were for centuries considered to be unanalyzable depictive gestures. Modern linguistic research has demonstrated that signs are composed of meaningless parts, equivalent to spoken language phonemes, that are combined to form meaningful signs. The chapter discusses a system called homesign used where a deaf child with hearing parents is not exposed to signed languages during language acquisition. Two ways in which gesture may become incorporated into a signed language through the historical process of grammaticalization are described. In the first, gestures are incorporated into a signed language as lexical signs, which go on to develop grammatical meaning. In the second, ways in which the sign is produced, its manner of movement, and certain facial displays, are incorporated not as lexical signs but as prosody or intonation, which may develop grammatical meaning. Finally, the chapter critically examines a new view in which certain signs are considered to be fusions of sign and gesture and proposes a cognitive linguistic analysis based in the theory of cognitive grammar.

Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.

Robyn Carston discusses the relevance-based on-line construction of ad hoc concepts (or occasion-specific senses), which she takes to be the source of much semantic polysemy (where words are stored with a cluster of related senses). In an attempt to give a full account of polysemy, one that marries the pragmatics of word meaning with the demands of grammar, Carston advocates a split view of the lexicon, with one part narrowly linguistic and computational, and the other an ever-evolving store of communicational units.