Sign (semiotics)

About: Sign (semiotics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4080 publications have been published within this topic receiving 70333 citations. The topic is also known as: semiotic sign.

Ecosemiotics: The Study of Signs in Changing Ecologies

Abstract: This Element provides an accessible introduction to ecosemiotics and demonstrates its pertinence for the study of today's unstable culture-nature relations. Ecosemiotics can be defined as the study of sign processes responsible for ecological phenomena. The arguments in this Element are developed in three steps that take inspiration from both humanities and biological sciences: 1) Showing the diversity, reach and effects of sign-mediated relations in the natural environment from the level of a single individual up the functioning of the ecosystem. 2) Demonstrating numerous ways in which prelinguistic semiotic relations are part of culture and identifying detrimental environmental effects that self-contained and purely symbol-based sign systems, texts and discourses bring along. 3) Demonstrating how ecosemiotic analysis centred on models and modelling can effectively map relations between texts and the natural environment, or the lack thereof, and how this methodology can be used artistically to initiate environmentally friendly cultural forms and practices.

Cinema and Semiotic: Peirce and Film Aesthetics, Narration, and Representation

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction PART 1: On Signs, Categories, and Reality and How They Relate to Cinema * The Use of Signs * The Construction of Meaning * Investigating Conduct as a Form * The Categories of Behaviour * The Categorial Form of Behaviour * Logic of Relations * The Metaphysics of Pragmaticistic Semiotic PART II: Semiotic and Its Practical Use for Cinema * Cinema 'Is' a Class of Sign * The Iconism of Cinema: A first Semiotic Approach * (From Film Pragmatics to) The Pragmaticism of Cinema PART III: What 'Is' Cinema? * Cinema 'Is' Syntagma * Cinema 'Is' Sign Function * Cinema 'Is' Percept * Cinema 'Is' Moving Matter or Time * What Cinema Becomes: Theory Objects Compared, Reconciled, Rejected * Intermezzo: Cinematic Imagination of Godard's Je vous salue, Marie PART IV: Narration in Film and Film Theory * The Narratological Question, Peirce, and Cinema * The Semiotic of Narrative Time * Cinematic Time * Intermezzo: Two Kinds of Narrative Time in Dreyer's Order PART V: Narration, Time, and Narratologies * Ricoeur's Mimesis * Heidegger's Ekstasis * Aristotle's Poesis * Greimas's Semiosis * Bordwell's Formalism * Olmi's Genesi PART VI: Enunciation in Cinema * Enunciation: From Vagueness to Generality * Narrative Enunciation * Rhetorical Enunciation in Cinema: Meaning in Figures * Aesthetic Enunciation in Film Epilogue: Two Aesthetic Processes in Cinema Conclusion Notes Bibliography Filmography, by Director

Learning an Embodied Visual Language: Four Imitation Strategies Available to Sign Learners

Abstract: The parts of the body that are used to produce and perceive signed languages (the hands, face, and visual system) differ from those used to produce and perceive spoken languages (the vocal tract and auditory system). In this paper we address two factors that have important consequences for sign language acquisition. First, there are three types of lexical signs: one-handed, two-handed symmetrical, and two-handed asymmetrical. Natural variation in hand dominance in the population leads to varied input to children learning sign. Children must learn that signs are not specified for the right or left hand but for dominant and non-dominant. Second, we posit that children have at least four imitation strategies available for imitating signs: anatomical (Activate the same muscles as the sign model), which could lead learners to inappropriately use their non-dominant hand; mirroring (Produce a mirror image of the modeled sign), which could lead learners to produce lateral movement reversal errors or to use the non-dominant hand; visual matching (Reproduce what you see from your perspective), which could lead learners to produce inward-outward movement and palm orientation reversals; and reversing (Reproduce what the sign model would see from his/her perspective). This last strategy is the only one that always yields correct phonological forms in signed languages. To test our hypotheses, we turn to evidence from typical and atypical hearing and deaf children as well as from typical adults; the data come from studies of both sign acquisition and gesture imitation. Specifically, we posit that all children initially use a visual matching strategy but typical children switch to a mirroring strategy sometime in the second year of life; typical adults tend to use a mirroring strategy in learning signs and imitating gestures. By contrast, children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appear to use the visual matching strategy well into childhood or even adulthood. Finally, we present evidence that sign language exposure changes how adults imitate gestures, switching from a mirroring strategy to the correct reversal strategy. These four strategies for imitation do not exist in speech and as such constitute a unique problem for research in language acquisition.

Cognitive and communicative approaches to linguistic analysis

Abstract: 1. Introduction (by Kirsner, Robert S.) 2. I. Cognitive Grammar 3. Form, meaning, and behavior: The Cognitive Grammar analysis of double subject constructions (by Langacker, Ronald W.) 4. Cataphoric pronouns as mental space designators: Their conceptual import and discourse function (by Smith, Michael B.) 5. II. Theoretical issues in classical sign-based linguistics 6. Monosemy, homonymy and polysemy (by Reid, Wallis) 7. On the relationship between form and grammatical meaning in the linguistic sign (by Elson, Mark J.) 8. Revisiting the gap between meaning and message (by Davis, Joseph) 9. III. Analyses on the level of the classic linguistic sign 10. The givenness of background: A semantic-pragmatic study of two modern German subordinating conjunctions (by Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo) 11. The relevance of relevance in linguistic analysis: Spanish subjunctive mood (by Jonge, Bob de) 12. A sign-based analysis of English pronouns in conjoined expressions (by Stern, Nancy) 13. Semantic oppositions in the Hebrew verb system (by Oron, Noah) 14. Grammaticization of 'to' and 'away': A unified account of -k and -m in Hualapai (by Ichihashi-Nakayama, Kumiko) 15. IV. Below and above the level of the sign 16. Interaction of physiology and communication in the make-up and distribution of stops in Lucknow Urdu (by Hameed, Shabana) 17. Between phonology and lexicon: The Hebrew triconsonantal (CCC) root system revolving around /r/ (C-r-C) (by Tobin, Yishai) 18. Length of the extra-information phrase as a predictor of word order: A cross-language comparison (by Otheguy, Ricardo) 19. Word-order variation in spoken Spanish in constructions with a verb, a direct object, and an adverb: The interaction of syntactic, cognitive, pragmatic, and prosodic features (by Ocampo, Francisco) 20. Estrategias discursivas como parametros para el analisis linguistico (by Martinez, Angelita) 21. Index of Names 22. Index of Subjects