A Nice Gesture

In an old article BBC News reported about research showing that Pet dogs can ‘catch’ human yawns. The article is available online in Biology Letters here. (Article ‘Dogs catch human yawns’ by Ramiro M Joly-Mascheroni, Atsushi Senju* and Alex J Shepherd, 2008).
The copying activity suggests that canines are capable of empathising with people, say the [...]

Posted on July 10th, 2011 under Animal Gestures, Gesture Semiotics, Seeing Intentions, Semiotics. Comments: None

Is it possible to give a good definition of social robotics? Is it a field of scientific study or is it only a catch phrase for exciting robot stuff? If it is a field of study, can we identify what belongs to it and what is outside of the field? Should we already set such [...]

Posted on October 4th, 2010 under Robots, Semiotics, Social Robotics. Comments: 1

One CareBot ™ One Family was uploaded by: geckosystems
Duration: 139
Rating:

Posted on July 10th, 2009 under Healthcare, Insults and Vulgarity, Robots, Semiotics, Social Robotics, YouTube Faves. Tags: artificial, autonomous, intelligence, localization, mapping, navigation, nurse, rescue, Robot, SLAM. Comments: None

[email] Hi Jeroen,
Happened upon your blog. Thought you might enjoy this paper on a proposed iconic-gestural origin of language. Or perhaps another of the publications [from SEDSU].
All the best,
Tomas Persson

Frontpage illustration from the paper.
Well, I checked it out and for all those interested in evolution it might be nice to do the same. The paper’s [...]

Posted on September 27th, 2007 under Gestural Origin of Language, Semiotics. Comments: None

I am running an experiment on the acceptability of variation in sign language. One of the things that touch upon this matter is sign wellformedness, which supposes a certain sign language phonology with rules that tell whether a sign is wellformed or not. I am not done thinking that one over but it did get [...]

Posted on July 12th, 2007 under Playing with Gestures, Semiotics. Comments: 1

I just found out that there is a trashcore (?) band called Obscene Gesture.

Don’t they look all tough and mean? (source)
And then that menacing gesture that is just ‘disgusting to the senses’, and/or ‘repulsive by reason of crass disregard of moral or ethical principles’.

These men-boys will have to watch out for the [...]

Posted on June 18th, 2007 under Giving the Finger, Insults and Vulgarity, Semiotics. Comments: None

I recently read (or glanced through parts) of the 2003 book by Scott K. Liddell: Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language

The main message of the book is one that I would have found trivial if I did not know anything about linguistics. It must take a linguist to surprise a linguist, I guess. [...]

Posted on January 5th, 2007 under Academia, Gesture Semiotics, Semiotics, Sign Language. Comments: None

My brother in law Coen sent me a link to a YouTube video about a digital drawing board: It raises a nice question: Is sketching gesturing? Two easy answers: Yes, it falls under gesture because it is movement that is intended to communicate (or movement that expresses intention. No, it is different because it [...]

Posted on December 11th, 2006 under Gesture Semiotics, Semiotics, Touch Gestures. Comments: 1

More important than politics, semiotics, science and art is of course… cricket. The noble game of hitting a ball and running back and forth dominates the lives of countless anglophiles throughout the former commonwealth.
Men will be boys? (source)
And now it appears that Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul Haq made an insulting gesture to umpire Darrell Hair, [...]

Posted on October 3rd, 2006 under Semiotics. Comments: None