Kirsten Bergman

Bio: Kirsten Bergman is an academic researcher from Bielefeld University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Gesture recognition & Gesture. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 62 citations.

Data-based analysis of speech and gesture: the Bielefeld Speech and Gesture Alignment corpus (SaGA) and its applications

Abstract: Communicating face-to-face, interlocutors frequently produce multimodal meaning packages consisting of speech and accompanying gestures. We discuss a systematically annotated speech and gesture corpus consisting of 25 route-and-landmark-description dialogues, the Bielefeld Speech and Gesture Alignment corpus (SaGA), collected in experimental face-to-face settings. We first describe the primary and secondary data of the corpus and its reliability assessment. Then we go into some of the projects carried out using SaGA demonstrating the wide range of its usability: on the empirical side, there is work on gesture typology, individual and contextual parameters influencing gesture production and gestures’ functions for dialogue structure. Speech-gesture interfaces have been established extending unification-based grammars. In addition, the development of a computational model of speech-gesture alignment and its implementation constitutes a research line we focus on.

打磨Using Language,倡导新理念

Abstract: 人教版高中英语新课程教材中,语言运用（Using Language）是每个单元必不可少的部分,提供了围绕单元中心话题的听、说、读、写的综合性练习,是单元中心话题的延续和升华.如何设计Using Language部分的教学,使自己的教学模式既不落俗套,又能真正体现新课程标准所倡导的教学理念,正是广大一线英语教师一直努力探索的问题.

A Theory of Semiotics

Abstract: Foreword Note on graphic conventions 0. Introduction-Toward a Logic of Culture 0.1. Design for a semiotic theory 0.2. 'Semiotics': field or discipline? 0.3. Communication and/or signification 0.4. Political boundaries: the field 0.5. Natural boundaries: two definitions of semiotics 0.6. Natural boundaries: inference and signification 0.7. Natural boundaries the lower threshold 0.8. Natural boundaries: the upper threshold 0.9. Epistemological boundaries 1. Signification and Communication 1.1. An elementary communicational model 1.2. Systems and codes 1.3. The s-code as structure 1.4. Information, communication, signification 2. Theory of Codes 2.1. The sign-function 2.2. Expression and content 2.3. Denotation and connotation 2.4. Message and text 2.5 Content and referent 2.6. Meaning as cultural unit 2.7. The interpretant 2.8. The semantic system 2.9. The semantic markers and the sememe 2.10. The KF model 2.11. A revised semantic model 2.12. The model \"Q\" 2.13. The format of the semantic space 2.14. Overcoding and undercoding 2.15. The interplay of codes and the message as an open form 3. Theory of Sign Production 3.1. A general survey 3.2. Semiotic and factual statements 3.3. Mentioning 3.4 The prolem of a typology of signs 3.5. Critique of iconism 3.6. A typology of modes of production 3.7. The aesthetic text as invention 3.8. The rhetorical labor 3.9. Ideological code switching 4. The Subject of Semiotics References Index of authors Index of subjects

A Coding System with Independent Annotations of Gesture Forms and Functions during Verbal Communication: Development of a Database of Speech and GEsture (DoSaGE).

Abstract: Gestures are commonly used together with spoken language in human communication. One major limitation of gesture investigations in the existing literature lies in the fact that the coding of forms and functions of gestures has not been clearly differentiated. This paper first described a recently developed Database of Speech and GEsture based on independent annotation of gesture forms and functions among 119 neurologically unimpaired right-handed native speakers of Cantonese (divided into three age and two education levels), and presented findings of an investigation examining how gesture use was related to age and linguistic performance. Consideration of these two factors, for which normative data are currently very limited or lacking in the literature, is relevant and necessary when one evaluates gesture employment among individuals with and without language impairment. Three speech tasks, including monologue of a personally important event, sequential description, and story-telling, were used for elicitation. The EUDICO Linguistic ANnotator software was used to independently annotate each participant’s linguistic information of the transcript, forms of gestures used, and the function for each gesture. About one-third of the subjects did not use any co-verbal gestures. While the majority of gestures were non-content-carrying, which functioned mainly for reinforcing speech intonation or controlling speech flow, the content-carrying ones were used to enhance speech content. Furthermore, individuals who are younger or linguistically more proficient tended to use fewer gestures, suggesting that normal speakers gesture differently as a function of age and linguistic performance.

Cognitive Grammar and gesture: Points of convergence, advances and challenges

Abstract: Abstract Given its usage-oriented character, Cognitive Grammar (CG) can be expected to be consonant with a multimodal, rather than text-only, perspective on language. Whereas several scholars have acknowledged this potential, the question as to how speakers’ gestures can be incorporated in CG-based grammatical analysis has not been conclusively addressed. In this paper, we aim to advance the CG-gesture relationship. We first elaborate on three important points of convergence between CG and gesture research: (1) CG’s conception of grammar as a prototype category, with central and more peripheral structures, aligns with the variable degrees to which speakers’ gestures are conventionalized in human communication. (2) Conceptualization, which lies at the basis of grammatical organization according to CG, is known to be of central importance for gestural expression. In fact, all of the main dimensions of construal postulated in CG (specificity, perspective, profile-base relationship, conceptual archetypes) receive potential gestural expression. (3) CG’s intensive use of diagrammatic notation allows for the incorporation of spatial features of gestures. Subsequently, we demonstrate how CG can be applied to analyze the structure of multimodal, spoken-gestured utterances. These analyses suggest that the constructs and tools developed by CG can be employed to analyze the compositionality that exists within a single gesture (between conventional and more idiosyncratic components) as well as in the grammatical relations that may exist between gesture and speech. Finally, we raise a number of theoretical and empirical challenges.