Just to clarify: I am using action to denote chunks of movement:
Action is thus highly subjective, it is just a mental construct (for either the performer or perceiver, or both) of chunks in the continuous flux of movement. Acknowledging the fact that our brain is working at multiple speeds and resolutions, there could also be actions that are chunks of smaller actions.
It is these actions (i.e. movement chunks) that will be the basis for gestures (i.e. actions with semantics).
I do not understand. Keeping still is not the same as ‘no movement’. At least not in the sense that zero is also a number. But I admit it gets a bit complicated after that.
What about the multiple speeds of the brain and chunk sizes? What are you thinking of?
Good point. But would you call touch or other types of manipulation movement? Then everything is movement, which I guess it is on a mechanical/atomic level, but does that make sense? I have to think some more about this.
Perhaps an interesting notion to include is that of ‘acts’ as in ‘speech acts’ or ‘gesture acts’. Your notion of actions seems to be directed at segmenting certain parts from the stream of movement (or perhaps ‘behaviour’ is better, because it includes staying still on purpose, blowing air, touching or pressing stuff, etc).