Evidence of voice modulation as spoken gestures

ScienceNOW has a report on the work of Howard Nussbaum and colleagues on how listeners can hear the modulation of a speaker's voice when the speaker is describing a fast-moving object or a slow-moving object even though what they are saying is exactly the same. The article, which is available in JML, demonstrates an unconsidered aspect of spoken language, and further distends the abilities of amodal theories of account for these results. Notice how I have not written the amodal theory (see Machery), however, I think it would be quite difficult for any amodal hypothesis to come up with an explanation for these data. Although I am certain that the field will see a post hoc explanation from the amodal camp soon.