Language Gestures Research Articles

ВИКОРИСТАННЯ КОМП’ЮТЕРНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ВИКЛАДАННІ МОРСЬКОЇ АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ

The goal of our research is using computer technologies, namely video materials, at the lessons of Maritime English. The system of exercises based on video resources was implemented into EASA (Engage, Activate 1, Study, Activate 2) lesson model for developing speaking competencies of future deck officers. Video represents the language in a live context at the lessons, because this learning tool is authentic. It links lessons to the real world and shows the language in action. The use of video is very effective in developing students' communicative culture, because video materials not only introduce students to the native language of their speakers, but also immerse them in a situation where they become familiar with the language of facial expressions and gestures, the style of interaction of people. Video materials allow students to assign tasks to interpreting facial expressions and gestures, recognizing the style of relationships, to avoid gross mistakes in a real situation, while communicating with foreigners. You can use videos such as: educational videos, documental film, cartoons, video recordings of television news and other television programs, advertising. There are three main stages of work with video: pre-viewing activities, while-viewing activities, post-viewing activities. The tasks used during the first stage should be aimed at preparing the students for the video material. At the textual stage, the demonstration of the video material itself must be accompanied by active educational activities of the student-viewers. The purpose of these tasks is to control the level of understanding. The third stage is aimed at creating a situational basis for further development of communicative competence. The content of the video, the features of the story, the characteristics of the participants and the situation should be the basis for the situation. At this stage, exercises aimed at developing productive oral skills are used. As the practice of teaching English at KSMA shows, the use of video materials facilitate increasing cadets' motivation to learn English, and moreover improve their listening and speaking skills. So, there are four types of communication activities involved while working with video materisls: listening, speaking, reading and writing, that allows to speak about the effectiveness and appropriateness of using authentic video at the lessons of Maritime English.

A Process to Develop Sign Language Corpus using Crowdsourcing

Humans use language in order to communicate between one another. There exist a number of languages which are either spoken or written. Among these languages, there exists a special type of language called Sign Language (SL). Sign language is a general term which includes any kind of gestural language that makes use of signs and gestures to convey message. Although the deaf community feels comfortable while using Sign Language as their mode of communication, but they face a lot of problems as well. Therefore, in order to help and assist the deaf community a repository of different sign languages are essential for each sign language. This work presents a process to develop a repository by collecting and validating sign language gestures of any language by involving the deaf community and language experts. A small data collection based on a proof-of-concept application has also been presented in this work. Lastly, it highlights the benefits of such corpus by discussing possible applications that can be built to serve the deaf community of the world at large.

Design And Implementation Of Bi-Directional Communication For Normal And Challenging People

Every normal human being sees, listens, and reacts to surrounding. There are some unlucky individuals who does not have this important blessing. Such individuals, mainly deaf and dumb, they depend on communication via sign language to interact with others. However, communication with ordinary individuals is a major impairment for them since not every typical people comprehend their sign language. Furthermore, this will cause a problem for the deaf and dumb communities to interact with others, particularly when they attempting to involve into educational, social and work environments. This mainly addresses to facilitate deaf and dumb person’s life style. Dumb and deaf people communicate with common people throughout the world using hand gestures. But common people face difficulty in understanding the gesture language. To overcome these real time issues system is developed. This is a user friendly, cost effective system which reduces communication gap between dumb and deaf with ordinary people.The proposed system captures a hand gesture using the high definition camera. Image processing of captured gesture is done on Raspberry pi 3. Amplified audio corresponding to each processed gesture is the final output, also provide the text to speech conversion.

А.И. Мещеряков о формировании человеческой психики у слепоглухих детей

The transcript of the report by Alexander Ivanovich Meshcheryakov “The formation of the psyche in the deaf-blind” is published. Report was made at the meeting of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in July 27, 1969. The report summarizes the theoretical results of the Zagorsk experiment, which continued Professor I.A. Sokolyansky’s long-term work on education of deaf-blind children. This work is interpreted from the point of view of the cultural-historical theory of forming human psyche and speech on the basis of “divided objective activities” of the educator and the child. A.I. Meshcheryakov experimentally demonstrates the technology of child’s interiorization of human activity forms through cultural objects, which, in his expression, are concentrated “wisdom of mankind” – social and historical experience of man’s transforming the world and his own self. The report pays particular attention to the development of cultural means of communication: from signal touching and gesture language to oral and written speech.

Optimization of criterion for objective evaluation of HRI performance that approximates subjective evaluation: a case study in robot competition

The standard approach to evaluate the performance of human-robot interaction (HRI) is subjective evaluation, for example, using questionnaires. Because such subjective evaluation is time-consuming, an alternative evaluation method based on only objective factors (i.e. human reaction behavior) is required for autonomous learning by robots and for scoring in robot competitions, etc. To this end, we aimed to investigate the extent to which subjective evaluation results can be approximated using objective factors. We observed and stored HRI history data through a robot-competition task in which the robot was required to generate comprehensible and unambiguous natural language expressions and gestures to guide inexpert users in virtual everyday environments. In addition, to acquire subjective evaluation results, we asked third-parties to evaluate the HRI performance by reviewing the stored interaction histories. From the results of a case study of robot-competition, we demonstrate the necessity for an objective method for the evaluation of HRI performance and a determination process for an effective evaluation criterion. The results of a multiple linear regression analysis to estimate the subjective evaluation results reveal that the subjective evaluation of HRI can indeed be reasonably approximated base on objective factors.

Representing Libras Poetry on Video

: My objective is to give interested parties an opportunity to understand sign language poetry and its poetic structure, using videos of poems published in Libras. The work draws on theoretical contributions from the following: Sutton-Spence and Kaneko, 2016; Machado, 2013; Klamt, 2014; Bauman, 2006 and Bahan, 2006. I am a poet and I will base my video essay on four poems of my own in Libras published on YouTube and Vimeo. They are: Flight over Rio, Where food comes from, V & V, Fallen Angel. All videos were edited on Vimeo by Martin Haswell, who was also the videographer. The research focuses on poems in Libras and details, through examples, video editing that divides the screen into 4 quadrants and in each quadrant displays the same video. All can be seen because Libras is a visual gestural language. Whether the videos are synchronized exactly or have a small delay, they combine smoothly, maintaining quality and understanding.

Gestural flick input-based non-touch interface for character input

A non-touch character input is a modern system for communication between humans and computers that can help the user to interact with a computer, a machine, or a robot in unavoidable circumstances or industrial life. There have been many studies in the field of touch and non-touch character input systems (i.e., hand gesture languages), such as aerial handwriting, sign languages, and the finger alphabet. However, many previously developed systems require substantial effort in terms of learning and overhead processing for character recognition. To address this issue, this paper proposes a gesture flick input system that offers a quick and easy input method using a hygienic and safe non-touch character input system. In the proposed model, the position and state of the hands (i.e., open or closed) are recognized to enable flick input and to relocate and resize the on-screen virtual keyboard for the user. In addition, this system recognizes hand gestures that perform certain motion functions, such as delete, add a space, insert a new line, and select language, an approach which reduces the need for recognition of a large number of overhead gestures for the characters. To reduce the image-processing overhead and eliminate the surrounding noise and light effects, body index skeleton information from the Kinect sensor is used. The proposed system is evaluated based on the following factors: (a) character selection, recognition and speed of character input (in Japanese hiragana, English, and numerals); and (b) accuracy of gestures for the motion functions. The system is then compared to state-of-the-art algorithms. A questionnaire survey was also conducted to measure the user acceptance and usability of this system. The experimental results show that the average recognition rates for characters and motion functions were 98.61% and 97.5%, respectively, thus demonstrating the superiority of the proposed model compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Jean-Luc Godard et Maurice Pialat lisant Musset : rêves et restes d’une théâtralité romantique

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the traces of nineteenth-century aesthetics in films by two enfants terribles of cinema, namely Maurice Pialat and Jean-Luc Godard. It concentrates on the shared references to Musset, and more specifically on the uses of Musset’s play One Does Not Trifle with Love (1834) in Pialat’s À nos amours/To Our Loves (1983) and Godard’s For Ever Mozart (1996). This study demonstrates that the recourse to Musset is done against the grain, i.e. against the hackneyed image of the poet inherited from Romanticism, and aims at conveying the oeuvre’s original violence. Through a detailed analysis of the two films and their specific approach to theatricality (defined as a set of explicit references to theatre, a relation to the body, a treatment of space, a use of the tableau, a gestural language and an expressivity of speech), this article explores the valences of these anachronistic survivals of Romanticism, and their political value.

Hand Motion-Recognition in an Intelligent Communication Module

our country India consists of very high population. Almost 9 millions of population in this world can be counted as a deaf or dumb people or both. We all know that the most valuable gift from the god given to human is the capability to watch, hear, spoke & to give response as per the situation arises. We all know communication is one of the most important medium through which one may carve up his/her feelings or express the information to others. The key points in communication are ability of listening and speak the word but so many from us are unlucky because they are not gifted by this ability from the god these are deaf & dumb and people. Now a days so many researches are going on to solve difficulties of these people of our society because they had to face very hard to communicate with normal person. It is too hard for mute(deaf & dumb) people to transmit their information to the normal people. As all normal people are not fully trained to understand different sign lingo, the communication between these two types of people becomes too complex. At the time emergency or other days whenever a mute (Deaf & Dumb) people are travelling passing a message (data) becomes too hard. Due to this disability one that has hearing and speaking disability doesn’t want to stand and face the race with normal person. Since the communication for the mute people is image (Visibility), not acoustic (Audio). For these mute people Hand motion plays a very part for communication. The data transmission between mute-deaf & normal people is always a very challenging job. Deaf people make use of sign language or gestures to make understand what he/she trying to say but it is impossible to understand by hearing people. The admittance to various communication based technologies plays an essential role for these (mute) handicapped peoples. Developing a small and compressed gadget for these mute people is a difficult task. Deaf-Dumb people find a difficulty in communicating with normal people and hence they always stay apart in their societies. Basically deaf-dumb ones uses various sign language for communication, & they always face lots of difficulty while communicating with normal people because they all not able to understand sign language every time. Hence there is always a hurdle in communication between these two type of peoples. There are so many researches has done in regulate to search a simple and easy way for mute people to communicate with the normal people and articulate themselves to the rest of the real world. So many improvements have been done in sign language but all are based on American gesture (sign) Language. Our research work is purely designed to provide an aid to this deaf-mute by developing and designing a smart communication module which will help to renovate sign language to text & speech communication with other and to help them lead a life in a much better way. Our paper represents a static gesture recognition algorithm that will be designed and implemented will be used in the smart communication system to bridge the communication gap between deaf & dumb and normal people. If the algorithm is implemented completely it can be can be also used to capture and analyze emotions of the people in area where high security is desired.

Human laterality for manipulation and gestural communication: A study of beach-volleyball players during the Olympic Games

ABSTRACTComparative studies can help understand better brain functional lateralization for manipulation and language. This study investigated and compared, for the first time, human adults’ laterality for manipulation and gestures in a non-experimental social context. We analysed the manual laterality of 48 beach volleyball athletes for four frequently expressed behaviours: a complex throwing action (jump serve) and three gestures (CLAP HAND, PUMP FIST and SLAP HAND-TO-HAND). We evaluated population-level laterality bias for each of the four behaviours separately, compared manual laterality between behaviours and investigated factors influencing gestural laterality. We furthered our between-gestures comparison by taking into account three categories of factors simultaneously: gesture characteristics (sensory modality), interactional context components (positions of interactants and emotional valence), and individual demographic characteristics (age, sex and country). Our study showed that (1) each behaviour considered presented a population-level right-hand bias, (2) differences of laterality between behaviours were probably related to gesture sensory modality and (3) signaller’s laterality was modulated differently in relation to positions of interactants, emotional valence, age and sex. Our results support the literature suggesting that left-hemisphere specialization for manipulation and language (speech and gestures) may have evolved from complex manual activities such as throwing and from gestural communication.

СROSS PLATFORM TOOLS FOR MODELING AND RECOGNITION OF THE FINGERSPELLING ALPHABET OF GESTURE LANGUAGE

A solution for the problems of the finger spelling alphabet of gesture language modelling and recognition based on cross-platform technologies is proposed. Modelling and recognition performance can be flexible and adjusted, based on the hardware it operates or based on the availability of an internet connection. The proposed approach tunes the complexity of the 3D hand model based on the CPU type, amount of available memory and internet connection speed. Sign recognition is also performed using cross-platform technologies and the tradeoff in model size and performance can be adjusted. the methods of convolutional neural networks are used as tools for gestures of alphabet recognition. For the gesture recognition experiment, a dataset of 50,000 images was collected, with 50 different hands recorded, with almost 1,000 images per each person. The experimental researches demonstrated the effectiveness of proposed approaches.

AL-AF’ÂL AL-TAWJÎHIYAH LADÂ AL-MU’ALLIMÎN FÎ AL-TAFÂ’UL AL-SHAFFÎ ATSNÂ TA’LÎM AL-LUGHAH AL-‘ARABIYAH ‘ALÂ DHAU NAZHARIYAH SINCLAIR WA COULTHARD

This research examined the directive speech acts of Arabic teacher in the teaching learning process: the perspective of Sinclair and Coulthard. The study focused on: (1) the forms of directive speech acts in the teaching learning process of Arabic class at Islamic Senior High School in Al Munawaroh. This research was conducted by qualitative case approach. The data of this research was the directive speech acts of teacher. The data were collected from recording observation and interview and was analyzed by interactive model analysis.The findings consisted of the form of directive speech acts in the teaching learning process of Arabic class containing 3 forms. There were imperative, interogative, and declarative. From this study, it is expected that Arabic language teachers are able to use isim fi’il amr"هيا" , gesture language for commanding, and interogative to improve students’ motivation and theirs’ feedback in language teaching.

Social group signatures in hummingbird displays provide evidence of co-occurrence of vocal and visual learning

Vocal learning, in which animals modify their vocalizations based on social experience, has evolved in several lineages of mammals and birds, including humans. Despite much attention, the question of how this key cognitive trait has evolved remains unanswered. The motor theory for the origin of vocal learning posits that neural centres specialized for vocal learning arose from adjacent areas in the brain devoted to general motor learning. One prediction of this hypothesis is that visual displays that rely on complex motor patterns may also be learned in taxa with vocal learning. While learning of both spoken and gestural languages is well documented in humans, the occurrence of learned visual displays has rarely been examined in non-human animals. We tested for geographical variation consistent with learning of visual displays in long-billed hermits ( Phaethornis longirostris), a lek-mating hummingbird that, like humans, has both learned vocalizations and elaborate visual displays. We found lek-level signatures in both vocal parameters and visual display features, including display element proportions, sequence syntax and fine-scale parameters of elements. This variation was not associated with genetic differentiation between leks. In the absence of genetic differences, geographical variation in vocal signals at small scales is most parsimoniously attributed to learning, suggesting a significant role of social learning in visual display ontogeny. The co-occurrence of learning in vocal and visual displays would be consistent with a parallel evolution of these two signal modalities in this species.

Interactive spaces for children: gesture elicitation for controlling ground mini-robots

Interactive spaces for education are emerging as a mechanism for fostering children’s natural ways of learning by means of play and exploration in physical spaces. The advanced interactive modalities and devices for such environments need to be both motivating and intuitive for children. Among the wide variety of interactive mechanisms, robots have been a popular research topic in the context of educational tools due to their attractiveness for children. However, few studies have focused on how children would naturally interact and explore interactive environments with robots. While there is abundant research on full-body interaction and intuitive manipulation of robots by adults, no similar research has been done with children. This paper therefore describes a gesture elicitation study that identified the preferred gestures and body language communication used by children to control ground robots. The results of the elicitation study were used to define a gestural language that covers the different preferences of the gestures by age group and gender, with a good acceptance rate in the 6–12 age range. The study also revealed interactive spaces with robots using body gestures as motivating and promising scenarios for collaborative or remote learning activities.

METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE USING THE GENRE OF IMPROVISATION AS A MEANS OF THE MANIFESTATION OF PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS IN A THEATRE OF COMEDY

Purpose of Research. The purpose of the article is to analyse the using the genre of improvisation as a manifestation of personality characteristics in a theatre of comedy in the context of culture, language and customs. Methodology. The methodology of the research includes the art history and culturological approaches. The author applies the system-structural, analytical and comparative methods. They allow studying the particularities of various types of theatrical characters, which use both ordinary language and the language of physical gestures that are typical for English culture. The combination of the accessible language and visual conceptual immediacy makes it suitable for intercultural communication at different levels . Scientific Novelty. The scientific novelty of the article is the fact that this issues is the first, which are implemented in the course for future actors and students, who are studying a foreign language and culture. It has been implemented at Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. The results of several months of an intensive theatre course are important for future projects and can be extrapolated to higher educational institutions in Ukraine. Conclusions. Thus, it has been found out that the theatrical workshops, based on the production of authentic, comedic texts, can provide rich and meaningful skills of foreign languages. Theatre courses can be used to learn a foreign language with understanding and interpretation of foreign literature and culture. In addition, the production process of the theatre encourages students to show their talents, challenge their abilities and achieve their goals in speaking any foreign language.

Theory of gesture in the 1920s Russian Avant-Garde: affect and embodiment in Stanislavski’s philosophy

ABSTRACTIn performance, it naturally occurs to the actor to become aware of her emotions, inner spirit, and physical agility, and Stanislavski established exercises to hone the understanding of these three realms. He found that there is an indissoluble link between internal sensation and physical expression, and he studied this phenomenon as the crux of his research. By the 1910s and 1920s – a culture replete with an interest in spiritualism – Stanislavski began to ground his physical training exercises in modernist theories that examined the spirit within the material body. The main goal of this essay is to analyse innovations in movement training, as I hope that this information offers insights to the field of Stanislavski research by positing that his system initiated an original language of gesture in dramatic art by which actors trained to use the body as their main source of scenic expression.

Samuel Beckett and Cinema by Anthony Paraskeva

Reviewed by: Samuel Beckett and Cinema by Anthony Paraskeva Colin Gardner Samuel Beckett and Cinema. Anthony Paraskeva. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Pp. 195. $108.00 (cloth); $37.95 (eBook). In a 1967 interview with Cahiers du cinéma, Jean-Luc Godard revealed: "I once intended to make a film of Happy Days. … I'd have liked to do it because I had a text and all I needed to do was film it. I'd have had just a single tracking shot beginning in long shot and ending in close-up. It would have started at precisely the distance necessary to bring me into close shot in an hour and a half, to end on the last sentence. It was just a matter of elementary arithmetic, a simple calculation of speed in relation to time."1 Although Beckett was notoriously opposed to cinematic adaptation of his stage plays (he once rejected Ingmar Bergman's request to direct a film version of Waiting for Godot, arguing that he did not want the play "Bergmanized"), Godard's strict harnessing of the gestic expressiveness of the diegetic action to the spatiotemporal exigencies of the cinematic apparatus would probably have been fully approved by the playwright. Indeed, after Film (1965) and the 1966 film adaptation of Play (Marin Karmitz's Comédie), his writings and directorial style had already begun to break the clear distinction between mechanical reproducibility and the contingency of the fluid theatrical event. This interdisciplinary focus on exact precision of timing and gestic movement—as well as the complete eschewal of improvisation—is central to Anthony Paraskeva's brilliant new book, which situates Beckett's methods as a writer-director within a historical double register of two [End Page 225] key moments in cinematic modernism. As he puts it, "Beckett did not write and direct for stage and screen in isolation … but within the context of a culture of interconnected representations between film, theatre and literature. Beckett's theatre practice, from the beginning of his work as a director in the mid-sixties, belongs to a modernist tradition of hybrid interactions between theatre and cinema" (Samuel Beckett and Cinema, 2). The first wave of such interactions is marked by the young Beckett's interest in the pictorial and temporal innovations of silent film, influenced by the work of Soviet directors such as Sergei Eisenstein (Paraskeva begins with Beckett's 1936 letter to the latter requesting admission to the Moscow State School of Cinematography), Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov. Equally important were the robotic biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold (which, with Kleist's writings on the marionette theater, were to become an important influence on the seemingly effortless lack of self-awareness in Ronald Pickup's performance in Ghost Trio); French impressionist filmmakers such as Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, and Marcel L'Herbier; and the vaudevillian slapstick of silent comedians such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton (who would go on to star in Beckett's Film). Drawing upon references in Beckett's letters and other archival material, Paraskeva shows that there is clear evidence Beckett was a regular film-goer and that he was also familiar with the theoretical writings of the day, most notably the avant-garde film journal Close-Up (1927–33) and the work of Rudolf Arnheim, whose 1933 book Film is predicated on the fact that the unique virtues of film as an art form derive not from its indexical realist properties but from the exploitation of its limitations: lack of sound and color and the inherent flatness of the cinema screen. These limitations were superseded by the coming of the sound film, whose overdetermined synchronization of dialog and image turned all formal innovation into pure spectacle, a case of true cinema being killed in the cradle. Antonin Artaud, for example, fought against the completion of the open-ended "meaning" of the image by speech—the major encumbrance of sound cinema—by developing his vision of a "language of signs, gestures and attitudes having an ideographic value as they exist in certain unperverted pantomimes."2 As Paraskeva argues, "For Artaud, the transition to sound had obstructed the development of an anti-naturalist silent cinema still in its infancy...

In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller

Reviewed by: In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller Anna Lisa Taylor In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity Patricia Cox Miller Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. 280. ISBN 978-0-81-225035-0 This is the fourth of Miller's books with "imagination" in the title, indicating a broader project of mapping the thought world of Late Antiquity. Earlier works [End Page 556] explored how writers interpreted dreams (Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture, 1997), thought about religion and language (The Poetry of Thought in Late Antiquity: Essays in Imagination and Religion, 2001), and understood the relation of holiness and materiality (The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity, 2016). In her new work, which looks at Christian writers' use of nonhuman animals, she argues that authors who presented the prevailing "rhetoric of human superiority and domination" paradoxically also challenged the hierarchical human/animal binary. Through zoomorphism (representing humans like animals), anthropomorphism (representing animals like humans, especially in the possession of speech and reason), and stories of interspecies encounters, these sources collapsed the distance between human and animal. Miller positions this book in animality studies, which is distinguished from animal studies by its lack of overt political engagement in animal rights. Recuperating a Christian sympathy toward animals, and nature is, however, implicitly a political move. The book is widely interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy, cognitive ethology, affect theory, new materialism, and—perhaps to show the enduring resonance of animals in the human imagination or to add color, light, and movement—twentieth-century poetry. Each of Miller's chapters examines a different way in whichh late antique Christian texts undermined the unstable human/animal binary and the devaluation of the latter. Chapter 1 looks at how birds function as metaphors for thought, spiritual ascent, and imagination. Chapters 2 and 3 consider examples of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism respectively in "animal-friendly" (68) exegetical texts including those by Augustine, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa, and in the late-third-century Egyptian Physiologus. Following contemporary ethologists, Miller rehabilitates anthropomorphism from its "mawkish" reputation (80), seeing it as both unavoidable and as a tool for understanding other species. The "shared creatureliness" (50) of human and animal is the basis of what philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls a "strange kinship" that allows for radical cross-species sympathy and undermines the always fraught boundary between the human and the animal. Further, since exegetical readings treated them as signifiers to be read allegorically, rather than literal animals, "Scriptural animals were freed from animals' debased position" (56) to become role models and moral exemplars for humans. Only in the coda to Chapter 2 does she admit that Origen's zoomorphism is "mostly negative" and that he likens humans to animals to express "an interior menagerie that is violent and savage" (76). Chapter 4 reads the encounters between monks and wild animals in the fantastic stories of the desert ascetics. Occasionally a talking animal threatens the human monopoly on logos, but usually the compassionate cross-species engagement is expressed through a shared language of gesture and touch. Chapter 5 looks at the "vibrant materiality" of small creatures, to present a cosmos teeming with life, which writers approached with both disgust and "theological wonder." Miller enlivens and re-enchants an early Christian landscape that has often appeared devoid of sympathy with nature. By centering the animals, she reveals a hidden richness in Christian views of the material world. She provides an [End Page 557] important corrective to the "absurdly reductive" (51) equation of early Christianity with anthropocentrism, and proves the existence of a powerful "countercurrent" (4) of cross-species compassion. Like the texts she studies, Miller's book also circles a paradox: she centers animals, but there are no real animals here. This fantastic menagerie—featuring bodyguard crows, speaking lionesses, vegetarian lions, celibate widowed doves, monogamous elephants, serpenteating deer, "obedient bedbugs" (103), a crocodile who serves as a raft, and an incorruptible peacock cutlet—contains no trace of real animals. The stories are frequently at odds with biology (134). In her introduction, she quotes historian...

The gesture–language association over time in toddlers with and without language delays

Background and aims Young children with language delays or other factors that heighten risk for autism spectrum disorder often show reduced gesture use. In particular, deictic gestures such as pointing and showing are reported to be deficient in young children with autism spectrum disorder, and their use has been found to predict expressive vocabulary development. The first aim of this study was to examine the production of two types of gestures (deictic and conventional) for two communicative functions (behavior regulation and joint attention) across two observational contexts in a sample of 18-month-old toddlers with significant language delays compared to typical controls. The second aim was to examine if and how gesture use (type and communicative function) at 18 months is associated with later receptive and expressive language. Methods Toddlers with significant language delays ( n = 30) or typical development ( n = 62) were drawn from longitudinal studies of early language delay as a risk factor for autism spectrum disorder. Toddlers identified with early language delay were classified based on a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder ( n = 12) or non-autism spectrum disorder ( n = 18) after an evaluation at 36 months. Gestures were coded from video recordings of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile–Behavior Sample and a naturalistic parent–child interaction obtained at 18 months. Language outcomes included receptive and expressive age equivalents from the Mullen Scales of Early Learning and the number of words produced on the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Results At 18 months, toddlers with language delay showed reduced deictic and conventional gesture use in both the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile–Behavior Sample and parent–child interaction compared to toddlers with typical development. Within the language delay group, toddlers with an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis at outcome also produced significantly fewer deictic gestures than those without an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis across both communicative functions and observational contexts. While all groups of toddlers gestured more in the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile–Behavior Sample, the mean difference in gesture use between the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile–Behavior Sample and parent–child interaction was significantly larger in toddlers with typical development than language delay for deictic gestures, as compared to the difference between the two contexts for conventional gestures. In the combined sample, a significant association was found between deictic gestures used in the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales Developmental Profile–Behavior Sample and change in the number of words produced from 18 to 36 months, accounting for significant demographic and developmental confounders. Conclusions Findings show that early language delay is associated with reduced deictic and conventional gestures across observational contexts. Importantly, deictic gesture use, but not conventional, was associated with the development of expressive language in toddlers with and without language delays. Implications Deictic gestures play an important role in the development of expressive language in toddlers, including those with language delays. Assessment of young children with language delays should include evaluation of types of gestures used and communicative function of gestures, with assessments utilizing communicative temptations yielding higher rates of gesture production. Directly targeting both gesture type and function in early intervention may be important in facilitating the development of language.

Ur-Words of the Affective Language of Gestures: The Hermeneutics of Body Movement in Aby Warburg

The article deals with the question of the relationship between visual memory and the literary and aesthetic transfer of high-potential emotional experiences in gestures as an immanent element of cultural creativity. Against that background the article focuses on the work of the German art- and cultural historian Aby Warburg, especially his lecture and picture series entitled “Urworte leidenschaftlicher Gebardensprache” (Ur-Words of the Affective Language of Gestures), which Warburg presented in January - February 1927 in Hamburg’s Cultural Library (Kulturwissenschftliche Bibliothek). Warburg was mainly interested in the processes by which the antiquity has suirvived in visual elements. He observed that especially high-potential emotional experiences were transferred into later cultures, mainly preserved in ancient artworks, but also in literature, and the “Metamorphosis” by Ovid was one of the most important transmitters. The ancient art and literature created “ur-words”, that is, original significant visual elements as gestures preserved in concepts and in cultural artefacts, which have been transferred to the later cultures and were finally one of the most important impulses for the overcoming of superstition and paganism. In the above-mentioned lecture and picture series, Warburg discusses that topic in the composition and ordering of pictures from Ovid’s stories, among others “Daphne and Actaeon”, “The Rape of Proserpina”, “The Death of Orpheus”, or “Medea killing her Children”. Warburg’s lecture, but especially the picture series were a methodological tool destined to present his highly complex reflections, rooted less in rhetoric than in psychology, anthropology and linguistics ca. 1900. The text is a result of a broader investigation made on the relationship between humanism and sciences, particularly psychology and anthropology in the context of Warburg’s understanding of cultural and individual image memory and the role of gestures in that context.