Chef’s Kiss as a Gestural Construction

Language: English

Handedness One-Handed
Position Central space at mouth level.
sound Kissing sound
Timing Usually no longer than 1 second.
Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3
Handshape All fingers are extended, touching at their tips.
All fingers are extended, touching at their tips.
All fingers are extended, and their tips are brought away from each other.
Movement Bringing fingers together.
Kissing the tips of the fingers.
Releasing the fingers away from mouth.
Orientation Fingers oriented upwards.
Palm is lateral.
Fingers oriented towards the speaker’s mouth.
Palm is vertical.
Fingers oriented upwards.
Palm is lateral.
Semantic property Something or someone is perfect or excellent.

Research

Research Question How can multimodal phenomena be modelled in Construction Grammar?
Findings Chef’s Kiss exemplifies a gesture that functions as a construction in its own right, as it constitutes a form-meaning pairing. It can occupy specific slots within argument structure constructions, resulting in a multimodal construct where the gesture assumes a syntactic role.

Metadata

Date Created 2026-07-07
Annotator Yassine Iabdounane

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