Multimodal Existential Negation in Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa

Abstract

Conventionalized or symbolic “emblematic” visual expressions are the types of “gesture” that most closely resemble lexical and grammatical elements seen in spoken languages or in sign languages in the visual modality. The relationship between conventionalization in the visual modality and in morphosyntax is a topic that remains only partially explored, with more research focused on iconic and indexical aspects of visual expression than on symbolic aspects. However, the culture-specific nature of symbolic gestures makes them an important phenomenon for the study of cultural variation at the intersection of modality and linguistic diversity. This study examines the relationship of a specific area of morphosyntax, negation and syntactic polarity, to an element of the visual modality, a practice of visual existential negation used by speakers of Imbabura Kichwa, a variety of Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa, a Quechuan language spoken in the Ecuadorian Andes. A data set of natural speech recordings will illustrate this open-handed rotating gesture that expresses the following negative existence: “there is none”. This gesture will be analyzed in terms of its form, meaning, and combination with spoken elements in discourse context, finding that in this variety of Kichwa, this practice is associated with a specific verb root meaning “to lack” or “to not exist”. This discussion will be framed in the wider context of the areal distribution of similar types of visual existential negation in other languages of Ecuador, in the context of the diversity of multimodal conventionalization across speech communities.

1. Introduction

The interaction of the visual modality with spoken morphosyntax is a topic that remains only partially explored in multimodality research. When visual practices are primarily iconic or indexical, it may be more straightforward to analyze them as contributing distinct and complementary meanings compared to the largely symbolic types of meaning conveyed by the words and phrases of spoken language. By comparison, symbolic visual practices, when we apply modality-independent definitions of “language” and “gesture” (Okrent, 2002), occupy a more indeterminate place with respect to their “linguistic” status.

The more conventionalized or “emblematic” types of visual practices that co-occur with spoken language are the class of “gestural” phenomena, which most closely resemble the grammaticalized elements seen in sign languages (some examples in Payrató, 1993; Kendon, 1992; Poggi, 2002; Brookes, 2004; Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013; Teßendorf, 2014, S. Floyd, 2016; Müller, 2017, etc.). The term “emblem” originates with the classic study of Efron (1941), also influentially applied by Ekman and Friesen (1969), although several other terms have been applied to these practices, including Kendon’s “autonomous” or “quotable” gestures, culturally “conventionalized” gestures, or, in simple semiotic terms, “symbolic” gestures (although they may have iconic and indexical elements as well; on terms and definitions, see Payrató & Clemente, 2020, pp. 39–50); there is also some overlap with the concept of “recurrent gestures”, although this term tends to be applied more broadly to conventional, but not necessarily emblematic or “quotable” forms (see Ladewig, 2014).

Symbolic or emblematic gestures are “multimodal tools at the frontier between verbal and nonverbal modes and are part of the communicative repertoire of individuals and sociocultural groups” (Payrató & Clemente, 2020, p. 1). Like the linguistic elements seen in spoken and signed languages, conventionalized visual communicative practices are limited to specific speech communities and show a large degree of variability across them. This means that the description of cultural variation in symbolic visual practices is an important goal for better understanding the intersection of multi-modality and linguistic diversity. Studies of how conventionalized visual and spoken practices systematically combine to create meaning in specific languages also contribute to the expansion of our understanding of the idea of “grammar” as inclusive of gesture (see Muller et al., 2013) and as a “modally hybrid” phenomenon (S. Floyd, 2016), as researchers develop a framework for “multimodal grammar” (Fricke, 2012, 2013; see also Payrató & Clemente, 2020, p. 133).

This study examines the relationship of a particular area of grammar, negation, and syntactic polarity to a conventionalized practice in the visual modality, a negative existential gesture used by speakers of the Imbabura variety of Highland Kichwa, a Quechuan language of the Ecuadorian Andes. This practice, referred to here as “visual existential negation” (VEN), consists of opening the hand with fingers spread apart and rotating at the wrist one or more times, either with one hand or with both hands together (see Figure 2). A data set of natural speech recordings will illustrate this open-handed rotating gesture that expresses negative existence: “there is none”. This practice will be analyzed in terms of its form, its meaning, and its coincidence with specific elements of spoken language in the sociocultural context of Imbabura Kichwa-speaking society.

1.1. Visual Existential Negation in the Languages of Ecuador

The national language of Ecuador is Spanish, which is spoken by a majority of the population. Spanish is mostly spoken as a first language but it is also used as a second language in communities where indigenous languages are used. A practice that is very similar to Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa visual existential negation is also found in Ecuadorian Spanish discourse (see Section 1.2, below), as well as among speakers of a number of other Ecuadorian languages. A study by Rice (2022) looks in detail at a comparable practice in the northern Pastaza variety of Amazonian Kichwa, which he describes as “spread-fingered hand torque”. While Pastaza Kichwa is a variety of Amazonian Kichwa, a closely related language to Highland Kichwa (see Rios et al., 2024 for issues of Quechua languages vs. dialects), there are some notable differences in the expression of visual existential negation compared to the Imbabura variety of Highland Kichwa considered here, particularly in terms of the type of spoken language it is observed to occur with (see Section 3). In his study, Rice also mentions that a similar practice is recognized by speakers of several other Ecuadorian Amazonian languages, including Wao Terero and Achuar-Shiwiar, and that there is a similar sign in Ecuadorian Sign Language (Lengua de Señas Ecuatoriana or LSE) (Rice, 2022, p. 62). Figure 1 shows the relevant entry from the online dictionary of LSE:

The LSE sign, at least as it is represented here, appears to only be articulated with one hand, while in spoken languages, it can also be expressed by both hands simultaneously. In addition, the dictionary lists a second meaning, “no vale”, or “it is worthless”, a meaning that is generally not seen in Imbabura Kichwa, although it may be found in some other varieties of Kichwa (including the Pastaza variety of Amazonian Kichwa; Rice, 2022). Rice considers some possible language contact scenarios for the spread of variants of this practice into the visual repertoire of many languages of Ecuador, including Spanish, LSE, Highland Kichwa, and several languages of the Amazon. There appears to have been considerable convergence between Spanish and many other languages of Ecuador around this practice; it is unclear if it is present in all Spanish dialects of Ecuador, but it is widespread in Highland Spanish. It is also seen sometimes in Coastal Spanish, but apparently it is less frequent in Pacific coastal regions than in the Andes.

1.2. Visual Existential Negation in Spanish

As was mentioned in the previous section, a practice related to the Imbabura Kichwa visual expression discussed in this article is commonly used by many speakers of Ecuadorian Spanish; it has a similar meaning and function in Spanish to that observed in both indigenous languages and LSE, as described above. However, it appears that there have not been any studies of the phenomenon in Spanish, so it was difficult to locate any published examples to compare with Imbabura Kichwa. Some of the best information that could be found was a 2019 discussion on a post by Rice (2022, pp. 34–35) in the online forum r/ecuador on the website reddit.com entitled ‘question about a gesture/sign of Ecuador’ [‘pregunta sobre un gesto/seña de Ecuador’].1 In this post, Rice’s prompt was as follows: “I am a linguist and I am doing a study of body language in Ecuador; a question for all the Ecuadorians is as follows: this GIF shows a gesture or sign; I would like to know how you, the Ecuadorians, interpret it, that is, what the sign means in your town/province” [Soy lingüista y estoy efectuando una investigación del lenguaje corporal en Ecuador; pregunta para todos los ecuatorianos, este GIF muestra un gesto o seña, quiero saber como ustedes los ecuatorianos lo interpretan, osea, que quiere decir la seña en su pueblo/provincia].

Most of the responding comments identified the meaning as “there is none” or “I don’t have any”, for example, user r/pretty_bellerina from Quito says that the practice means the following: “There is none” [No hay!]. User r/fezumsamba, from Conocoto near Quito, interprets the practice in the following way: “For me it is ‘I don’t have any’” [Para mí es ‘no tengo’]. The post included the following GIF, here represented in a series of still images:

Figure 2. Stills from a GIF, a 2019 post by Rice in the reddit.com forum r/ecuador.

Figure 2. Stills from a GIF, a 2019 post by Rice in the reddit.com forum r/ecuador.

The different responses to this prompt provide additional information on the form and meaning of the practice when it is used in the context of Spanish. While some commenters noted a similarity with the visual convention for “more or less” or “so so” [más o menos], several people, such as user u/Gemrg, remarked that there is a difference in hand orientation that distinguishes these two meanings: “If you think about it, I think that in “more or less” the hand can be a little more horizontal. In “there is none” the hand is not horizontal” [Si te das cuenta creo que el “mas o menos” puede ser un poco más horizontal la mano. El “no hay” no se lo usa con mano horizontal.]. Another user, u/evarias91, also noted this difference between the vertical orientation of “there is none” and the horizontal orientation of “more or less”: “For me, this sign means there is none of something, since to indicate “MORE OR LESS” the hand is used in a semi-horizontal way” [Para mí esta señal significa que no hay algo, puesto que para indicar “MAS O MENOS” se utiliza la mano en forma semi horizontal.]; compared to the very specific Ecuadorian negative existential expression, this “more or less” gesture can be observed across other Spanish varieties, with similar form-meaning pairings in other languages like English. Similarly, a deleted user from Loja, says: “For me it means there is nothing. If it was more horizontal, it would be more or less”. [Para mi significa que no hay nada. Si estuviese mas horizontal, seria mas o menos]. Some varieties of Spanish may feature a more horizontal articulation of “more or less” (also in Catalán; see Payrató & Clemente, 2020, pp. 101, 163, 197). But hand shape (flat vs. rounded with spread fingers) is also a factor in distinguishing these meanings.

In addition to orientation, two users also remarked that the speed of the gesture is relevant, u/blacklama saying, “Fast movement: there is none” and “Slow movement: more or less” [Movimiento rápido: no hay; Movimiento lento: más o menos] and u/LigreG0, identifying themselves as being from Quito, saying “It can mean two things: If the movements is slow, it can mean “more or less”. If the movement is fast, it means “nothing”; so it seems to me that the gif is a nothing” [Puede significar 2 cosas: Si el movimiento es lento significaría “más o menos”. Si el movimiento es rápido significaría “nada”; Por lo tanto a mí parecer el de gif es un nada]. Another distinction that commenters note is that the negative existential is commonly articulated with two hands, as noted by u/letagy from Quito: “it can also be understood as “empty” or “there is nothing” but I feel like that would be better with two hands” [también se podría entender como “vacío” o “no hay nada” pero siento que eso sería mejor con dos manos].

Some users give some amusing examples of the usage of this practice in daily interactions, such as u/Fernando3161 from Quito: “Example: Hey, see if there are nails in the box!.—There is nothing”. [Ejemplo: Hey, mira si clavos hay en la caja!.—No hay nada.]. Or u/Jonklopez who used a reduced form of no hay (“there is none”) from common speech: “Nay = there is none; It’s all gone, young man, come back later. [Nay = no hay; Se acabó joven vuelva más tarde.]. Or u/romcabrera, identifies themself as being from Guayaquil: “There are no popsicles, they are melted, come back later” [No hay bolo, están hechos agua, venga más tarde.] Or r/xodius80: “I means I am broke, you get the next case (of beer)” [Significa estoy chiro pon la otra java]. Or r/sebdel18: “If a driver that is coming in the opposite direction makes this sign through the window it means that the road is closed ahead” [Si un conductor que viene en sentido contrario te hace esa seña por la ventana significa no hay paso.]. The examples seen in Section 3 in Imbabura Kichwa conform to these basic standards of form and meaning, but with some specific aspects that are described in that section.

1.3. Spanish and Kichwa in Contact

The descriptions by Spanish-speaking online forum users in the previous section reveal that this visual practice has a conventional negative existential meaning that is recognized by speakers of Spanish from regions all around Ecuador. Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa, the most widely spoken indigenous language in Ecuador, has had a long history of contact with Spanish, with centuries of bilingualism since the colonial period, leading to a number of convergences between the two languages. However, while there is a body of research on the convergence of linguistic elements between Spanish and Kichwa (e.g., Lipski, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2021; Olbertz, 2005, 2008, 2013; Stewart, 2018, 2020, etc.), there has been little or no study of similarities in the visual modality. After giving some additional background, this article will analyze the basic elements of this practice of visual existential negation in Kichwa based on a series of examples from a northern variety of the language.

2. Background

The following analysis brings together three main areas of research: First, it considers the basic semiotic principles of conventionalized, symbolic visual bodily communication. Then it briefly reviews the linguistic resources that are seen in existential negation expressions across languages. Finally, it takes into account some basic historical and social background information about the Imbabura variety of the Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa language and the communities where it is spoken. The following subsections cover each of these areas.

2.1. Symbolic Semiotics

In typologies of gesture, the category of visual expression that in many ways least satisfies the criteria for “gesture” and most resembles linguistic elements is conventionalized symbolic practices sometimes known as “emblematic gestures” (McNeill, 1992, 2000; Kendon, 1992, 2004; Gawne & Cooperrider, 2024; Efron, 1941; Ekman & Friesen, 1969; and Payrató & Clemente, 2020) or by other terms such as “quotable gestures” (Kendon, 1992; Brookes, 2001), among other terms (see above). These are generally the types of visual expressions that are mentioned when talking about cultural differences, for example, in the many well-known distinct repertoires of practices used by speakers of Italian (Kendon, 1992, 1995; Poggi, 2002; Colasanti, 2023). Alternatively to terms like “emblems”, these practices can be described in general semiotic terms, since by definition, they represent stable form-meaning pairings that are “symbolic” (Peirce, 1955, pp. 98–119; Kockelman, 2005) in that they are largely arbitrary, a property that has been thought of as a basic element of sign systems since the origins of modern linguistics (Saussure, 1916); they may also combine other semiotic properties (iconic or indexical), but they must have some symbolic aspects. It is possible to take inventory of these “vocabularies” in specific speech communities (e.g., Brookes, 2004, for gestures used in Zulu; Payrató & Clemente, 2020, for Catalán; other examples cited in Teßendorf, 2014, p. 89).

Of course, like with some signs of sign languages that may sometimes emerge from more gestural elements (Goldin-Meadow, 2013; Brentari & Goldin-Meadow, 2017; Goico & Horton, 2023), symbolic conventionalization often begins with an iconic motivation, which can leave identifiable traces in the form of the expression, showing the complex relationships between iconicity and arbitrariness (see Dingemanse et al., 2015). However, once the expression becomes a conventionalized practice, its particular iconic elements are incorporated into its symbolic meaning, and rather than having a more open-ended interpretation based on some kind of concrete resemblance, a stable form-meaning pairing is present, and in communication, this narrower specific meaning will always be conveyed when the expression is used.

It is possible that the meaning of the visual existential expression “there is none” originally represented an empty space, or perhaps empty hands, in a more iconic way, before becoming conventionally symbolic. Gestures referring to the absence or disappearance of objects in other languages may also feature variants of meanings related to empty hands, e.g., “steal” in Catalán (Payrató & Clemente, 2020, pp. 1, 106, 139, 200, 213, 218). Adding to the semiotic complexity, in addition to its iconic dimensions, the possibility of directing such manual expressions to a specific location in space adds some indexical properties to this practice as well (particularly, see examples (8) and (9) in Section 3.2). So while the discussion here is primarily about symbolic meaning, a broader semiotic complexity including iconic and indexical dimensions should also be kept in mind.

2.2. Negation

While symbolic visual practices used along with spoken language come in many forms, the specific conventionalized expression analyzed in this study concerns a narrower area of meaning: existential negation. Negation has been observed to be expressed linguistically in many different ways since early comparative study (e.g., Jespersen, 1917). Morphosyntactically marked negation represents one of the elements that has been proposed as potentially universal in all languages (Greenberg, 1966, p. 50). While it is usually the negative polarity that includes some kind of explicit marking, with positive polarity being unmarked, there are some exceptions to this generalization (Evans & Levinson, 2009, p. 439). In syntax, negation is studied with relation to “polarity”, in which sentences can be understood as either being marked as affirmative, or positive, versus negative, with different subtypes of these polarities (Zwarts, 1998).

Typological studies have compared negation across languages and have identified some basic categories for the types of negation marking that are found, including morphological negation, in which a morpheme on the verb indicates that the reference does not apply, and syntactic negation, in which a free negation marker occurs in a clause (Dahl, 1979; Miestamo, 2007, 2017). However, there is another subtype of negation that is relevant for the present study, the negation of a nominal or copular predicate, stating that something does not exist (Croft, 1991; Veselinova, 2013; Miestamo, 2007, pp. 561–562). This type of “existential negation” is the area of meaning that is the focus of this study, and more specifically, cases when there is not a grammatical negator but instead a lexically negative verb like “to lack” (Veselinova, 2013, pp. 112–117; Miestamo, 2017, pp. 423–424). While in Spanish and some other types of Kichwa, the visual practice in question occurs with several different types of existential negation; in Imbabura Kichwa, it occurs primarily with a specific lexically negative verb (illa-; see below).

For South American indigenous languages, resources for negation are usually mentioned, although sometimes only briefly, in specific sections of descriptive grammars for individual languages. There have also been a number of more detailed studies that focus on the specific resources seen across languages of the region in specific families (e.g., Michael & Granadillo, 2014) or more on general comparative study (Krasnoukhova et al., 2023), including some studies focusing on Andean languages (Pineda Carrasco, 2021). For Quechuan languages, in particular, most members of the language family use variants of a basic Quechuan structure for negation, which classifies as both syntactic and morphological negation (a “double” construction; Dahl, 1979, pp. 88–89) because it includes a combination of a particle mana (sometimes reduced to na), which occurs before the verb, and a suffix -chu, which occurs typically on the verb but which may also occur on other elements, interacting with information structure. These are some basic examples from Imbabura Kichwa (Cole, 1985, p. 85):

(a.)	Juzi	mana	chay	llama-ta	randi-rka-chu
	José	NOT	that	sheep-ACC	buy-PAST-NEG
	José did not buy that sheep.
(b.)	Juzi	mana	chay	llama-ta-chu	randi-rka
	José	NOT	that	sheep-ACC-NEG	buy-PAST
	It wasn’t that sheep that José bought.
(c.)	Mana	Juzi-chu	chay	llama-ta	randi-rka
	NOT	José-NEG	that	sheep-ACC	buy-PAST
	It wasn’t José that bought that sheep.

There are many other details of syntactic and morphological negation that could be mentioned for Imbabura Kichwa and Quechuan languages in general, including usage in negative imperatives and in polarity questions, as well as certain constructions in which just one of the two elements (particle or, more rarely, suffix) can be used alone. There are also ways to form negative adverbials like “nothing” or “no one” (Cole, 1985, pp. 86–87). However, unlike in the Spanish examples provided by reddit.com users above, where visual negation is used together with morphological negation, particularly the particle “no” in the phrase “no hay” (“It does not exist” or “There is none”), the Imbabura Kichwa data show that this practice is unattested with morphosyntactic negation but appears to be exclusive to lexical verbal negation using the negative existential verb illa-, which can be loosely translated as “to lack” or “faltar” in Spanish. Example (1) shows a visual existential negation (hereafter, VEN) with a simple phrase using the verb illa-; the speaker, an alpaca caretaker, is answering the author’s question about whether the animals have historically been present in the area or if they were more recently introduced.

QUSF2016_05_18S2_1539697
(1)	Francisco:	illa-rka	kay-pi
		lack-PAST	here-LOC
		There weren’t any (alpacas) here.
		((NEG.EXIST))

In example (1), the predicate illarka, a past tense form in which the third person (undifferentiated for singular or plural) is conveyed through zero-marking (Cole, 1985, p. 144), and VEN (one-handed variant; see Section 3.2) occur simultaneously with the spoken predicate, the back-and-forth rotating movement ceasing around the beginning of the adverbial phrase kaypi (“here”). Usually, there are two rotations before retraction: back and forth, back and forth. This type of coordination of the visual practice with spoken predicates based on the verb illa- is characteristic of VEN in Imbabura Kichwa speech. The examples in Section 3 show that the usage of VEN with this verb is a recurrent type of multimodal combination, or “composite utterance” (Enfield, 2009), including both auditory and visual components. After some brief sociohistorical and geographical context on Imbabura Kichwa in the next section (Section 2.3), Section 3 provides a series of examples from a video corpus of language documentation materials that illustrate how VEN is habitually used in combination with spoken language in Imbabura Kichwa discourse.

2.3. Imbabura Kichwa-Speaking Society

The Ecuadorian province of Imbabura is located in the northern Andean region of the country, with the majority of its population centers found in the temperate inter-Andean valleys at altitudes between 2000 and 3000 m above sea level. Before Quechua was introduced, first by the Inca Empire in the late 15th and early 16th Centuries and then was further spread by Spanish policy during the colonial period between the 16th and 18th Centuries, the main language spoken in this region was a Barbacoan language referred to in Colonial documents as the language of Caranqui or Carangue, after one of the main settlements near the present-day provincial capital of Ibarra, which appears to have been the same language used in all the major population centers of Caranqui, Otavalo (historically “Sarance”), Cayambe, and Cochasquí, covering the highland areas of the modern province of Imbabura as well as northern Pichincha (Ministerio de Fomento, 1897, vol. 3, p. 129). Influence from this pre-Quechuan language played a role in the formation of the specific local dialects that emerged in this area (S. Floyd, 2022), which represents the most northern area where Quechuan languages are spoken in Ecuador, the only more northern Quechuan language being Ingano, spoken in a small area of southern Colombia (Levinsohn, 1976).

Similar substrate influence processes involving other pre-Quechuan Barbacoan languages across the Ecuadorian highlands led to the formation of the language known as “Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa”, which today is spoken in a number of mutually intelligible dialects throughout the Andean regions of Ecuador (with a separate, but closely related Kichwa language spoken in the Amazonian lowlands) (Muysken, 2019; S. Floyd, 2022). Like other Quechuan languages and many other languages of the Andean region, highland Kichwa is an agglutinative, verb-final language, contrasting with the more fusional, verb-medial Spanish. However, after many centuries of contact and bilingualism, Kichwa and Spanish have converged in many ways, although this has been studied only in terms of spoken language and not with respect to visual practices (see Section 1.3). Today Imbabura Kichwa is spoken in indigenous communities in rural areas and villages across the province of Imbabura and is used in regional cities as well.

The indigenous people of Imbabura have been the subject of a body of ethnographic study going back many years (e.g., Parsons, 1945), focusing on many different aspects of local culture (Lema, 1995), including the elaborate ritual calendar (Wibbelsman, 2009; Voirol, 2013), socioeconomic aspects of the important handcraft industry (Colloredo-Mansfeld, 1999), oral traditions (Chávez, 1989), and other topics. There is a published grammar of Imbabura Kichwa (Cole, 1985), and there have been some studies in linguistic anthropology among Imbabura Kichwa speakers (S. Floyd, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2018), but almost no research on multimodality or visual expression in this speech community. The specific VEN practice analyzed here, while generally known among Spanish-speakers, has never been mentioned in any study on any variety of Kichwa until the recent study by Rice (2022) and the current study; here, we will look at its particular characteristics when used in Imbabura Kichwa.

3. Data and Analysis

The data for this study consists of a series of examples taken from documentary video corpora from the following two projects: a 2015–2016 project supported by the Ecuadorian science agency Senescyt focusing on Imbabura and Pichincha Kichwa, with a few additional examples considered from a 2017–2020 project looking at a broader range of Kichwa varieties, supported by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (see Section 4). Examples largely come from conversational ethnographic interviews in which either local people or the author asked open-ended questions to prompt informal conversations about everyday topics in order to document both linguistic and cultural aspects of Kichwa communities. The main dataset considered here is a collection of examples taken from the 2015–2016 corpus of 67 video recordings totaling 42 h of data.

Examples were identified by searching transcriptions for both overtly negated existential phrases and phrases with the semantically negative existential verb illa- and then reviewing the video for every case. Moreover, 23 potential examples of VEN were identified, occurring in 16 of the recordings; 8 examples were excluded due to a degree of ambiguity in the visual expression, and the remaining 15 clear examples of VEN were examined through qualitative analysis, selecting 10 examples from 10 different speakers for inclusion in this study. Additionally, one further example of VEN with no accompanying spoken material was also identified; random checking of the corpus failed to identify further examples of this phenomenon, but, since they cannot be searched for through spoken elements in the transcription, it is possible that further examples exist in the corpus. Anecdotally, visual-only VEN is also observed to occur from time to time in everyday conversation outside of the corpus materials but appears to be less frequent than VEN combined with spoken elements.2

The main general observation about the combination of spoken and visual expression in these examples is that, unlike in Spanish, where the primary spoken element is a negative phrase marked by a particle, “no hay” (“there is none”), here, we mainly see the use of the Kichwa verb illa- which means something like “to lack”. The original Quechuan phoneme written as <ll> was a palatal lateral approximant/ʎ/but in northern Kichwa dialects this phoneme is pronounced as a voiced postalveolar fricative/ʒ/; in these examples, the root transcribed as <illa> is actually pronounced/iʒa/.

In addition to observations about the form and meanings of the spoken and visual components of multimodal expression, in some cases in the following discussion additional ethnographic details are included to provide broader cultural context for the examples. In their extensive study on emblematic gesture, Payrató and Clemente emphasize that an ethnographic perspective can often be essential for analyzing these types of gestures (2020, pp. 123–134). This study follows the tradition of linguistic anthropological work on gesture from an ethnography of communication approach (e.g., Brookes, 2001, 2004; Sherzer, 1991, etc.).

3.1. Multimodal Existential Negation with Two Hands

Example (2), from the same recording as (1) above, illustrates an instance of the two-handed variant of VEN, in which the speaker uses a simple form of a verb, without any additional grammatical elements aside from third person. In theory, two-handed VEN might be thought of as a “full” form versus a “reduced” one-handed form, but in practice, one hand is commonly occupied with some other activity, and the one-handed variant appears more frequently in this dataset (12 of the 16 examples located in the corpus). Unlike in (1), in (2), this speaker’s hands are completely free, allowing her to use both of them. Like in (1), the articulation of VEN in (2) is rapid and aligns closely with the verb illa-.3

QUSF2016_05_18S2_1298429
(2)	María Nicolasa:	veranu-pi-ka	jiwa-pash	illa-n
		summer-LOC-FOC	grass-also	lack-3
		In summer there is no grass (for grazing).
				((NEG.EXIST))

Example (2) can be considered a typical, simple example of two-handed VEN. Example (3) illustrates another case of a fully articulated, two-handed version of VEN, but this time with a few additional linguistic elements to consider. The context of this conversation is a discussion of the different family names that are present in the local community of Morochos in the Cotacachi region of Imbabura; there used to be members of the Bayu family, but today “there are none” left. The first speaker uses the verb illa- twice without raising his hands, but when he says the phrase “Nothing, nothing, there are none”, ending with the verb illa-, he now raises his two hands and rotates them both simultaneously.

QUSF2016_04_22S4_1664551
(3)	José:	Bayu	chay,	mayjan-da	Bayu
		Bayu	that	which-ACC	Bayu
		Bayu, that, which Bayu
	Miguel:	Illa-n-ma		Bayu-ka,	illa-n-ma
		not.exist-3-EV.DIR		Bayu-FOC	no.exist-3-EV.DIR
		There are no Bayu; there are none
	José:	Pay-kuna	ña	illa-n
		3-PL	already	not.exist-3
		They no longer exist
	Miguel:	nima	nima	illa-n-mi	Bayu, Jose Manuel
		nothing	nothing	not.exist-3-EV.DIR	Bayu Jose Manuel
		Nothing, nothing, they don’t exist, Bayu, José Manuel
		((NEG.EXIST------------))

In (3), VEN begins at the word “nothing” and continues throughout its repetition and the verb. There are two elements of spoken language that indicate that the speaker is making his statement somewhat strongly: the repetition of “nothing” and the usage of the grammatical suffix -mi (sometimes variant -ma), an affirmative declarative evidential based on information from direct personal experience or other strong “best possible grounds” evidence (Faller, 2002 on Cuzco Quechua; Quechuan languages feature different variations of the basic Quechuan evidential system; see also R. Floyd, 1993; S. Floyd, 2005; Hintz & Hintz, 2017; Jimenez Nina, 2022). We can analyze the very prominent and extended two-handed visual expression aligning with these two emphatic spoken elements, as this is the most prominently and lengthily articulated form of the visual practice seen in this data set.

In (4), the visual negative existential is also articulated with two hands, but compared to (3), it is much quicker and not as prominently articulated. The context for this example is an explanation of the medicinal properties of the chawar mishki (“agave sweet/sugar”) liquid that the speaker and her daughter are extracting from agave plants during the recording. The rapid articulation seen here is most likely related to the way in which the practice occurs, interspersed with a series of iconic gestures that are self- or body-directed in that they use the speaker’s body to talk about others’ selves and bodies (Cooperrider, 2014; S. Floyd, 2019), in this case using gestures around the stomach of the speaker in the context of reference to stomach sickness.

QUSF2016_04_29S1_4631616
(4) Rosa María:	tia-ka		chay	mandado-ta	rura-shpa-ka
	woman-FOC		that	order-ACC	do-SR-FOC
	The woman, following that order (to drink medicinal liquid)
	ña	biksa		junda-y-ka	tuku-ri-shkia
	already	stomach		full-N-FOC	happen-REFL-PTCP
	when the stomach has already become swollen,
	((gesturing at stomach---------------))
	ña	illa-n	biksa-ka		semana-wan-ga
	already	lack-3	stomach-FOC		week-with-FOC
	already (the swelling) was gone within a week.
	((NEG.EXIST---------)) ((gesturing at stomach--))

In (4), two-handed iconic gestures occur both before and after the visual negative existential, and so the latter occurs quickly within this sequence, with a rapid articulation that allows the other gestures to continue as the speaker continues describing the medicinal properties of chawar mishki for stomach sickness. Even so, since the speaker’s hands are not otherwise busy, it is possible to use both hands in her expression in this case. As in other examples, the visual practice occurs aligned with the verb illa- but, compared to (3), in (4) the verb does not occur with any evidential morphology, which also may correlate with the more reduced articulation, more like that seen in (2).

As a general rule, the two-handed version of VEN is used by speakers who have both hands free while speaking, which is the case in (2), (3), and (4). This practice appears to interact to some extent with spoken language, since in (3), it has a longer duration that overlaps with emphatic spoken elements like repetition and direct evidential marking. It also can interact with other visual-gestural practices, such as in (4), where it occurs interspersed in a series of iconic, body-directed gestures. So, while these three examples are all instances of a similar practice of VEN, they show slight variation according to discourse context. The next section illustrates further variation by considering one-handed examples of VEN.

3.2. Multimodal Existential Negation with One Hand

For comparison to examples (2) to (4) of two-hand VEN, examples (5) to (9) show cases of the one-handed version of the VEN. For example, in (5), the speaker is discussing her practices as a midwife compared to the practices of Western-style medical doctors in hospitals where there is no medicine or water and where the environment is cold, compared to her warm and cozy birthing room. Before the VEN, her hands are clasped and at rest, and she raises her right hand to precisely coincide with the occurrence of the verb illa- in her spoken discourse, then returns to the clasped position.

QUSF2016_05_05S1_1660290.
(5) Carmen:	jambi-kuna		falta-ju-n,	yaku-kuna	falta-ju-n
	medicine-PL		SP:lack-PROG-3	water-PL	SP:lack-PROG-3
	There is no medicine; there is no water
	kunu-chi-na		falta-ju-n
	heat-CAUS-N		SP:lack-PROG-3
	There is no heating.
	uu	kay-pi-ka	chay-kuna-ka	illa-n
	oh	here-LOC-FOC	that-PL-FOC	lack-3
	Oh, here we don’t have those here.			((NEG.EXIST--))

Interestingly, the Spanish borrowing falta, “to lack”, roughly equivalent to Kichwa illa-, occurs twice with Kichwa morphology just before the verb illa-, but this Spanish near-synonym does not co-occur with VEN in either case. It may be the case that the pairing of illa- with this visual practice is not as conventionalized as with Spanish-origin falta-, a Spanish borrowing that may not be part of a common conventional multimodal combination for Kichwa speakers compared to their native verb. In this case, like in (3) and (4), the verb illa- does not take any additional suffixes (e.g., evidential), and the articulation is rapid and synchronized to the verb, as was also seen in those cases. It is unclear what factor may influence the choice of a one-handed articulation; the fact that the speaker’s hands move out of and then quickly back into a stable, resting, clasped position in the speaker’s lap may be relevant.

In (6), we see another one-handed variant of VEN. While here, the verb illa- takes an affirmative evidential suffix -ma, which we saw associated with the emphatic multimodal expression in (2). However, while here, the left hand is raised and articulated prominently; the right hand is being used to sustain the speaker’s weight since she is leaning on an object as they converse. This provides a likely explanation in this case for why the right hand was not employed (the speaker is not left-handed). This is also the only example in this data set of one-handed VEN in which the left hand was used; the right hand appears to be dominant in most cases.

QUSF2015_12_03S7_2496086
(6)	Luzmila:	ña-kuti	chay-shuk	col	seda	ni-shka-ka
		already-again	that-one	cabbage	silk	say-PTCP-FOC
		Again, that other cabbage, “silk” it is called,
		yanga,	seda-pa-lla-ta	illa-n-ma
		common	silk-POSS-LIM-ACC	lack-N-EV.DIR
		so, there is no “silk” (cabbage).		((NEG.EXIST--))

Has she used her right hand, or both hands, the speaker in (6) would have had to change her entire posture, so the simultaneous usage of one hand appears to explain to some extent the usage of the other. However, opting for the non-dominant hand and raising it up to mid-torso level suggests that the expression is part of the “foregrounded” communication and not just “background” processing (Cooperrider, 2017). A related analysis can be provided for example (7) because in that case, the speaker is holding a thermos of tea in his left hand, so he uses his right hand only in order to articulate VEN. In this case, the verb illa- is used with a habitual marker that appears to be unique to the Imbabura variety of Kichwa (although many other varieties remain largely unstudied, so it may occur elsewhere).

QUSF2016_05_18S2_1844053
(7)	Antonio:	chay	tiempo-ka
		that	time-FOC
		In those times
		kay	ciencia	cientifico-ka
		this	science	scientist-FOC
		these sciences, scientists
		illa-kariyan		na-chu
		lack-HAB		no-Q
		did not exist, right?
		((NEG.EXIST--))

The final two examples of one-handed VEN in this section are from interviews dealing with meaningful cultural topics involving ethnic identity and local spirituality. Like in (5), the speakers in (8) and (9) could potentially have used both hands, as they are not holding onto any objects as in (6) and (7). This fact shows that the choice of one-handed versus two-handed VEN, while influenced by the usage of a hand for a simultaneous practical purpose, is not entirely determined by this factor and instead is sensitive to several other factors, including individual expressive choices and issues of discourse context. This does not mean that the choice is random but reflects the fact that the hands are multi-functional and may be enlisted for many different activities simultaneously in addition to visual/gestural expression, so many that it is impossible to predict or exhaustively describe all the possible combinations of activities.

In example (8), the speaker is describing cultural differences between the two major ethnic groups that speak Imbabura Kichwa: the Otavaleños, including Otavalo, southern San Pablo Lake, Cotacachi, and adjacent areas, and the Cayambis, including southern San Pablo Lake, Caranqui, Zuleta, and adjacent areas, as well as northern Pichincha province around the city of Cayambe. While the linguistic distinctions between these two areas are not abrupt but rather constitute a dialect continuum, there are several cultural signifiers that are more binary, including forms of traditional dress. Each town has its own specific variant of traditional dress, but in general, Otavaleño and Cayambi clothing can be distinguished by several distinctive features; for example, Otavaleña women use anaco skirts (bolts of cloth sustained by chumbi woven belts) and cloth headdresses while Cayambi women use pleated skirts and hats, and so on. Men’s dress also patterns distinctly between these two regions, notably in terms of hairstyle. Otavaleño men generally wear their hair long in a braid, while Cayambi men tend to cut their hair short. This is the topic of discussion in example (8), where the speaker, from the Cayambi ethnic group, mentions that although both groups are indigenous, one difference is that Otavaleños wear their hair long, while Cayambis wear their hair short.

QUSF2016_05_13S2_2328663
(8)	Juan:	pero	tukuy-pi	iguala-ri-n-lla			iguala-ri-ta-ka
		but	all-LOC	equal-REFL-3-LIM			equal-RFL-ACC-FOC
		but in all things we resemble each other, resembling each other,
		unico		akcha			illa-y-manda
		only		hair			lack-N-from
		(we are) only (different) due to lack of hair
							((NEG.EXIST--))
	María:	muchu
		cut.off
		cut off
	Juan:	pero		tukuy-lla-ta		runa		pura	karin
		but		all-LIM-ACC		indigenous		among	at.least
		but in everything at least we are all indigenous people

The VEN in example (8) is articulated with one hand in a notable orientation upwards toward the head, which may also have an indexical dimension, since the topic of speech is hair. This may be part of the motivation for the usage of just one hand, and it is also relevant that in the discourse before and after this example, the speaker is articulating many other types of gestures only with the right hand, with the left hand continuously resting and inactive on his leg. Linguistically, the spoken element of this example is a nominalized instance of the verb illa-, illustrating how VEN can combine with both finite and non-finite verbs.

Another one-handed example of VEN, example (9) features a culturally meaningful explanation of an important element of Andean spirituality: the perspective that mountains are powerful deities that are similar to humans in that they have personalities and gender. Andean peoples have long been known for attributing qualities of personhood to prominent mountain peaks, documented as far back as the early colonial Quechua manuscript from Huarochirí, which tells of the mountain deity Para Caca (Taylor, 2006). In Andean Kichwa-speaking society, mountain deities are often considered to be part of dualistic pairs of male and female mountains (e.g., Lyons, 1999), and in the Province of Imbabura, the two main mountain deities are the male Taita Imbabura (Father Imbabura) and the female Mana Cotacachi (Mother Cotacachi) (Chávez, 1989; McDowell, 2019); sometimes this pair is also known as Jari Rasu, “male snow”, and Warmi Rasu, “female snow”. In example (9), the speaker performs VEN with his right hand elevated in an indexical indication of the Imbabura Volcano in front of him.

QUSF2016_05_06S1_1643280
(9)	José Carlos:	Imbabura			Tayta-ka
		Imbabura			father-FOC
		Father Imbabura
	Simeon:	Ari
		yes
	José Carlos:	Mm,	ima-shna-ka,		ñukachik-pa-ka,			ah
		mm	what-like-FOC		1PL-POSS			ah
		Mm, what is it like? For us, ah
		pay-ka	asha	killa-gu			ka-pa-n
		3-FOC	a.little	lazy-DIM			be-HON-3
		He is a little lazy.
	Simeon:	Ari
		yes
	José Carlos:	puñu-y	siki	ka-pa-n
		sleep-N	ass	be-HON-3
		He is very sleepy.
	Simeon:	Ah cierto?
		Ah really?
	José Carlos:	chay-manda-mi			pay-ka		pay-pa-ka	illa-n,
		that-from-EV.DIR			3-FOC		3-POSS-FOC	lack-3
		That is why he, for him, there is no (water).						((NEG.EXIST--))
		casi	na	yapa		tiya-n,		ima-pash
		almost	NEG	extra		exist-3		what-also
		there is not much additional (water) of any kind.

In example (9), the speaker contrasts Mother Cotacachi, who provides a lot of water to surrounding communities, with Father Imbabura, who provides fewer sources of water, thus being “lazy” and “sleepy”. Even more clearly than in (8), in (9) VEN is articulated together with an indexical pointing gesture, the speaker indicating the Imbabura Volcano that he is referring to both with the angle of his hand and the direction of his gaze while he uses this same hand to articulate the VEN. In this case, this indexical element of the multimodal expression provides some motivation for a one-handed articulation of VEN.

Considering the one-handed cases of VEN in examples (5) to (9), there are a number of different factors that interact with this practice. These include the following: right-handed dominance; speakers using their other hand for practical activities; and the other types of gesture that occur before, after, and simultaneously with VEN, including indexical pointing in which existential negation is oriented towards a specific referent in space (see Kita, 2003). Rice also finds that VEN is more frequent with one hand than with two in Amazonian Kichwa and also discusses several factors that may influence the usage of one or two hands, including cases where speakers are holding an object in the other hand (Rice, 2022, p. 43). In all the Imbabura Kichwa examples shown up to this point, both two-handed and one-handed VEN are closely aligned to the verb illa- in several different kinds of morphosyntactic configurations. In contrast, the next section looks at a couple of cases where VEN occurs with other linguistic forms or with no spoken material.

3.3. Visual Existential Negation Without the Verb Illa-

In two cases in the data set, VEN occurs without the verb illa-, once with a different verb and once without any spoken elements at all. While this phenomenon may sometimes go undetected in transcribed video data because examples cannot be easily located by looking at the video where the verb illa-occurs, a careful review of data samples suggests that it is very rare in Imbabura Kichwa discourse for VEN to occur without this verb, as these were the only two examples attested in the data set. In example (11), a two-handed articulation of VEN occurs together with the phrase “nothing, nobody” in a narrative about a man running from what appeared to be a ghost.

QUSF2016_05_13S1_2508779
(10)	María:	chay-kuna	ishtanku-kuna-pi	wagta-ju-shka	nin	pungu-ta
		that-PL	cantina-PL-LOC	hit-PROG-PTCP	EV.REP	door-ACC
		There in the cantinas he was knocking on the doors
		ashta	tarak	tarak,	nima	nadie
		hasta	IDEO	IDEO	nothing	nobody
		until it sounded “tarak tarak” (but there was) nothing, nobody.
					((NEG.EXIST-------))

Example (10) shows that it is indeed possible for Imbabura Kichwa speakers to express VEN in combination with spoken material other than the verb illa-, here with the word nima or “nothing”. However, a review of the data set checking other cases of “nothing” and phrases like “there are none” (mana tiyanchu) and similar could not locate many other examples with these types of elements. There are probably a few more such cases to be found in the data, but they appear to be rare, and some are not as clear-cut instances as those seen in this study, where examples were chosen based on their clarity.

Finally, there are a few cases in which VEN can occur with no accompanying spoken material at all. In example (11), a woman is eating a snack, and her mouth is full just as the researcher asks her a question, inquiring whether a species of bird, present in the cattle pastures where the recording was made, has a name in Kichwa; it turned out to be easier to answer that there was no name with only visual expression, since the speaker was still chewing at the moment.

QUSF2018_06_11S1_464000
(11)	Simeon:	shuti-ta		chari-n kichwa	shimi-pi
		name-ACC		have-3 kichwa	language-LOC
		Do they have a name in Kichwa,
		chay	yurak	pishku-kuna
		that	white	bird-PL
		those white birds?
	Ursula:	((NEG.EXIST---))

The form of example (11) can be analyzed as being motivated by a number of factors, including the fact that the speaker is chewing with her mouth and holding onto a bag of food with her left hand, resulting in a one-handed articulation with no spoken material at all. Typical of emblematic or symbolic visual expressions, the conventionalization of the meaning of VEN allows it to stand as a full conversational turn on its own under these circumstances.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

This final section will summarize the findings based on the data set presented in Section 3 with respect to the general conceptual linguistic and cultural issues raised in Section 1 and Section 2. First, we can say generally that visual existential negation (“VEN” in this study) in Imbabura Kichwa is a conventionalized, symbolic, or “emblematic” sign (in the semiotic Saussurean or Peircean sense) with a stable meaning known by most speakers of the language. This practice of spreading out the fingers and rotating the hand can be articulated with both hands at once or with a single hand, usually the right. Second, the conventionalized meaning of this sign is a negative existential, roughly translated as “there is/are none”; negative meanings in spoken languages can be communicated by grammatical negation through morphemes or particles or through negative semantics of verbs. Third, in the speech community of Imbabura Kichwa, a local variety of Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa spoken in the northern Ecuadorian Andes, VEN largely occurs together with a specific set of spoken linguistic constructions based on the verb root illa- or “to lack”, “to not exist”.

In terms of its form, the examples in Section 3 showed how speakers sometimes articulate VEN with two hands, while in other cases they use just one, usually the dominant hand, most generally the right. While there may be some correlation between the relationship between spoken formulation, particularly a more elaborate or emphatic spoken formulation combining with a more overt, two-handed spoken expression, the factors motivating the form of VEN appear to be sensitive to many different complex interactions of different dimensions: spoken expressions, other visual expressions, and other practical activities with the hands.

In terms of its form-meaning pairing, VEN can be considered a conventionalized practice with a stable meaning that often occurs in a multimodal composite utterance (Enfield, 2009) that employs both the auditory and the visual modalities together. As a conventional, culturally specific practice, this phenomenon from Imbabura Kichwa is an example of how linguistic and cultural variation can be studied through multimodality. Several other types of such conventionalized multimodal expressions have been studied, particularly combinations of indexical pointing practices that vary widely across cultures (Levinson & Wilkins, 2006), with different types of articulation (Sherzer, 1973; Enfield, 2001; Wilkins, 2003; Cooperrider & Núñez, 2013; Cooperrider et al., 2018), different correlations with local topography (Cooperrider et al., 2022) and temporality (Núñez & Sweetser, 2006; S. Floyd, 2016). Pointing is a visual practice that combines with specific types of spoken elements, largely deictics and directionals, while VEN in Imbabura Kichwa and other languages of Ecuador combines with expressions of negation. Recent interest in comparative studies of “emblems” (e.g., Gawne & Cooperrider, 2024) can be a pathway into other explorations of conventional multimodal expressions pairing visual practices with specific elements of spoken language. Such studies could lead to further advances in understanding diversity in multimodal human expression through the patterns seen across the recurrent multimodal/composite utterance types used in different speech communities.

As was noted in Section 1, the specific practice of VEN analyzed here is not exclusive to Imbabura Kichwa but occurs in many different languages and language varieties of Ecuador, including Ecuadorian Spanish, Ecuadorian Sign Language, and several other indigenous languages. The examples in this study showed that in Imbabura Kichwa, VEN is used primarily in combination with one specific spoken verb, illa-, “to not exist”, but data from other dialects of Ecuadorian Highland Kichwa show that in other varieties, it is associated with a broader range of spoken expressions with a more varied set of meanings. This observation aligns with Rice’s findings about Amazonian Kichwa, where, in addition to “referential absence”, kinds of absence can also be expressed by VEN, such as “epistemic absence”, e.g., phrases like “I don’t know” (Rice, 2022, pp. 56–57). In one example, VEN even occurs with a phrase, including an ideophone that is associated with silence, in reference to the absence of sound (Rice, 2022, pp. 53–54). This variation reveals dimensions of cultural diversity that are crucial to understanding both similarities and differences across speech communities.

This wide variety of usage was not generally observed for Imbabura Kichwa; in one ambiguous example from the same recording as example (10), a two-handed movement resembling VEN appears to occur with the phrase “Where did I go?” at a part in the narrative when a man runs blindly from the ghost he encountered, apparently referring to “not knowing”, but this is the only such case of “epistemic negation” found in the data. In Amazonian Kichwa, while VEN occurred with the verb illa- like in Imbabura Kichwa, it was more common with the grammatically negated “mana tiya-” or “not exist”, featuring the negation particle mana (Rice, 2022, p. 49). In a recent recording of the Kichwa of Quito, a variety severely endangered by urbanization of the capital city of Ecuador but which is still spoken by older people in a few historically indigenous communities that are being swallowed up by urban expansion, a much wider variety of spoken expressions compared to Imbabura Kichwa was seen to be combined with VEN. In addition to examples with illa-, there were also VEN constructions based on (ma)na tiya-like in Amazonian Kichwa (autoka na tiyarkachu or “there were no cars”; kulki mana tiyirkachu or “there was no money”) and with other expressions like (ma)na chari-, “not have” (wagrata na charinchik or “we have no cow”). There were also spoken phrases combined with VEN that resembled “epistemic negation”, a lack of knowledge, such as mama intindi- to “not understand”, borrowing the Spanish verb entender (mana intindinaun, “they don’t understand”). This variety is notable because Quito Kichwa is an adjacent variety to Imbabura Kichwa, showing how even closely related language varieties may show diversity through multimodal micro-variation.

The use of VEN in Imbabura Kichwa, in other types of Kichwa, and in other languages of Ecuador shows a level of diversity that indicates a very complex language contact situation in which practices have been shared across languages, with high degrees of variation from language to language or dialect to dialect. The related yet unique nature of the expression of this visual-multimodal resource in these different contexts is related to the conventionalized, symbolic nature of this type of practice, which can develop in slightly different ways across different cultural contexts and speech communities. It is hoped that future studies will explore these related practices in Spanish, Ecuadorian Sign Language, different Kichwa varieties, and other indigenous languages. Specific linguistic and ethnographic studies, and comparison among them, will allow us to learn much more about the complex intersections of symbolic meaning, grammatical aspects like negation and polarity, cultural diversity, and multimodality.