Group of Prosodic and Gesture Studies

The Prosodic and Gestural Studies Group (GrEPG) is part of the Unitat de Recerca en Lingüística (UR-Ling), Department of Translation and Language Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). The group is strongly characterized by its collaborative approach, promoting joint research and exchange across several Catalan and international institutions. The GREPG is a founding member of the ISGS Catalonia hub, a Hub which aims to promote gesture studies in Catalonia.

Research conducted within GrEPG has the aim of understanding the role of prosody and co-speech gestures in human communication from a crosslinguistic, developmental, and cognitive perspective. Three important strands of this research include: (a) to incorporate this knowledge into semantic models of language that model the interface areas with other components; (b) to empirically investigate how humans process prosodic and gestural patterns in combination with speech; and (c) to investigate the cognitive and developmental benefits of prosody and gesture in different areas, such as first and second language acquisition, as well as communication training for language impaired and non-impaired populations. The GrEPG uses an interdisciplinary approach (linguistic and psychological) and a combination of methods and techniques such as linguistic and prosodic/gestural analysis, comparative (developmental, cross-linguistic) and experimental methods such as eye-tracking and neuronal analysis techniques in collaboration with other groups.

You can find out more about the GrEPG's specific areas of research by looking at the research page.