Form: An extensible, kinematically-based gesture annotation scheme

Abstract

Annotated corpora have played a critical role in speech and natural language research; and, there is an increasing interest in corpora-based research in sign language and gesture as well. We present a non-semantic, geometricallybased annotation scheme, FORM, which allows an annotator to capture the kinematic information in a gesture just from videos of speakers. In addition, FORM stores this gestural information in Annotation Graph format-allowing for easy integration of gesture information with other types of communication information, e.g., discourse structure, parts of speech, intonation information, etc.