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.

Changing the role of schools

Abstract: When school buildings go up, they are a sign of progress, a promise for the future. Among all the other icons of modern times-roads, real estate developments, factories, or prisons-new schools engender less ambivalence and attract less protest. Education is something that modernising people almost unequivocally want.

Virtual signs for improving information communicated to the automotive driver

Abstract: A method and system for providing information to an individual using an electronic sign in which the sign displays information in response to the identity of the tag or an account associated with the tag. The information is displayed when the tag, which may be carried by the individual or in a vehicle, approaches the sign. A user can preselect from among various information types he wishes to receive, such as news, weather, sports and personal messages. The user can also select a priority for each information type.

Body as subject().

Abstract: The notion of subject in human language has a privileged status relative to other arguments. This special status is manifested in the behavior of subjects at the morphological, syntactic, semantic and discourse levels. Here we present evidence that subjects have a privileged status at the lexical level as well, by analyzing lexicalization patterns of verbs in three different sign languages. Our analysis shows that the sub-lexical structure of iconic signs denoting states of affairs in these languages manifests an inherent pattern of form-meaning correspondence: the signer's body consistently represents one argument of the verb, the subject. The hands, moving in relation to the body, represent all other components of the event - including all other arguments. This analysis shows that sign languages provide novel evidence in support of the centrality of the notion of subject in human language. It also solves a typological puzzle about the apparent primacy of object in sign language verb agreement, a primacy not usually found in spoken languages, in which subject agreement generally ranks higher. Our analysis suggests that the subject argument is represented by the body and is part of the lexical structure of the verb. Because it is always inherently represented in the structure of the sign, the subject is more basic than the object, and tolerates the omission of agreement morphology.

Image-Based and Sensor-Based Approaches to Arabic Sign Language Recognition

Abstract: Sign language continues to be the preferred method of communication among the deaf and the hearing-impaired. Advances in information technology have prompted the development of systems that can facilitate automatic translation between sign language and spoken language. More recently, systems translating between Arabic sign and spoken language have become popular. This paper reviews systems and methods for the automatic recognition of Arabic sign language. Additionally, this paper highlights the main challenges characterizing Arabic sign language as well as potential future research directions.

Iconicity and metaphor: Constraints on metaphorical extension of iconic forms

Abstract: Some conceptual metaphors common in spoken languages are infelicitous in sign languages. The explanation suggested in this article is that the iconicity of these signs clashes with the shifts in meaning that take place in these metaphorical extensions. Both iconicity and metaphors are built on mappings of two domains: form and meaning in iconicity, source domain and target domain in metaphors. Iconic signs that undergo metaphoric extension are therefore subject to both mappings (Taub 2001). When the two mappings do not preserve the same structural correspondence, the metaphorical extension is blocked. This restriction is formulated as the double-mapping constraint , which requires multiple mappings to be structure-preserving. The effects of this constraint go beyond explaining possible and impossible metaphors in sign languages. Because of the central role of metaphors in various linguistic processes, constraints on their occurrence may affect other linguistic structures and processes that are built on these metaphors in both sign and spoken languages.