Construction & Exploitation of Sign Language

190 Pages·2008·17.35 MB·English

Workshop Programme
3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages:
Construction and Exploitation of Sign Language Corpora

08:45 – 09:00 Workshop opening & welcome
09:00 – 09:30 Diane Lillo-Martin, Deborah Chen Pichler: Development of sign language
acquisition corpora
09:30 – 10:00 Onno Crasborn, Inge Zwitserlood: The Corpus NGT: an online corpus for
professionals and laymen
10:00 – 10:30 Trevor Johnston: Corpus linguistics & signed languages: no lemmata, no corpus.
10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break
11:00 – 11:30 Lorraine Leeson, Brian Nolan: Digital Deployment of the Signs of Ireland Corpus
in Elearning
11:30 – 12:00 Johanna Mesch, Lars Wallin: Use of sign language materials in teaching
12:00 – 13:30 Poster session 1
13:30 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 16:00 Poster session 2
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 – 17:00 Onno Crasborn: Open Access to Sign Language Corpora
17:00 – 17:30 Adam Schembri: British Sign Language Corpus Project: Open Access Archives
and the Observer’s Paradox
17:30 – 18:00 Cat Fung H-M, Scholastica Lam, Felix Sze, Gladys Tang: Simultaneity vs.
Sequentiality: Developing a transcription system of Hong Kong Sign Language
acquisition data
18:00 – 18:45 General discussion
18:45 – 19:00 Workshop closing
i
Workshop Organisers

Onno Crasborn, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Eleni Efthimiou, Institute for Language and Speech Processing, Athens, Greece
Thomas Hanke, University of Hamburg, Germany
Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd, Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities & Social Sciences,
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Inge Zwitserlood, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Programme Committee

Penny Boyes Braem, Center for Sign Language Research, Basel, Switzerland
Annelies Braffort, LIMSI/CNRS, Orsay, France
Patrice Dalle, IRIT, Toulouse, France
Evita Fotinea, Institute for Language and Speech Processing, Athens, Greece
Jens Heßmann, University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal, Germany
Trevor Johnston, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Lorraine Leeson, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
Adam Schembri, University College London, UK
Graham Turner, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK
Meike Vaupel, University of Applied Sciences Zwickau, Germany
Chiara Vettori, EURAC, Bolzano, Italy

ii
Table of Contents

Title Page

Patricia Álvarez Sánchez, Inmaculada C. Báez Montero, Ana Mª Fernández 9
Soneira: Linguistic, sociological and technical difficulties in the development
of a Spanish Sign Language (LSE) corpus
Louise de Beuzeville: Pointing and verb modification: the expression of semantic 13
roles in the Auslan Corpus
Cat Fung H-M, Scholastica Lam, Joe Mak, Gladys Tang: Establishment of a 17
corpus of Hong Kong Sign Language acquisition data: from ELAN to CLAN
Cat Fung H-M, Felix Sze, Scholastica Lam, Gladys Tang: Simultaneity vs. 22
Sequentiality: Developing a transcription system of Hong Kong Sign
Language acquisition data
Emilie Chételat-Pelé, Annelies Braffort, Jean Véronis: Annotation of Non 28
Manual Gestures: Eyebrow movement description
Onno Crasborn: Open Access to Sign Language Corpora 33
Onno Crasborn, Han Sloetjes: Enhanced ELAN functionality for sign language 39
corpora
Onno Crasborn, Inge Zwitserlood: The Corpus NGT: an online corpus for 44
professionals and laymen
Philippe Dreuw, Hermann Ney: Towards Automatic Sign Language Annotation 50
for the ELAN Tool
Paul Dudis, Kristin Mulrooney, Clifton Langdon, Cecily Whitworth: Annotating 54
Real-Space Depiction
Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea: Annotation and Management of the 58
Greek Sign Language Corpus (GSLC)
Thomas Hanke, Jakob Storz: iLex – A database tool integrating sign language 64
corpus linguistics and sign language lexicography
Annika Herrmann: Sign language corpora and the problems with ELAN and the 68
ECHO annotation conventions
Jens Heßmann, Meike Vaupel: Building up digital video resources for sign 74
language interpreter training
Marek Hrúz, Pavel Campr, Miloš Železný: Semi-automatic Annotation of Sign 78
Language Corpora
Trevor Johnston: Corpus linguistics & signed languages: no lemmata, no corpus 82
Jakub Kanis, Pavel Campr, Marek Hrúz, Zdeněk Krňoul, Miloš Železný: 88
Interactive HamNoSys Notation Editor for Signed Speech Annotation
Lutz König, Susanne König, Reiner Konrad, Gabriele Langer: Corpus-based Sign 94
Dictionaries of Technical Terms – Dictionary Projects at the IDGS in
Hamburg
Markus Koskela, Jorma Laaksonen, Tommi Jantunen, Ritva Takkinen, Päivi 101
Rainò, Antti Raike: Content-based video analysis and access for Finnish Sign
Language – a multidisciplinary research project
Klaudia Krammer, Elisabeth Bergmeister, Silke Bornholdt, Franz Dotter, 105
Christian Hausch, Marlene Hilzensauer, Anita Pirker, Andrea Skant, Natalie
Unterberger: The Klagenfurt lexicon database for sign languages as a web
application: LedaSila, a free sign language database for international use

iii
Lorraine Leeson, Brian Nolan: Digital Deployment of the Signs of Ireland 112
Corpus in Elearning
François Lefebvre-Albaret, Frederick Gianni, Patrice Dalle: Toward a computer- 123
aided sign segmentation
Diane Lillo-Martin, Deborah Chen Pichler: Development of sign language 129
acquisition corpora
Johanna Mesch, Lars Wallin: Use of sign language materials in teaching 134
Cédric Moreau, Bruno Mascret: LexiqueLSF 138
Yuji Nagashima, Mina Terauchi, Kaoru Nakazono: Construction of Japanese 141
Sign Language Dialogue Corpus: KOSIGN
Victoria Nyst: Documenting an Endangered Language: Creating a Corpus of 145
Langue des Signes Malienne (CLaSiMa)
Elena Antinoro Pizzuto, Isabella Chiari, Paolo Rossini: The Representation Issue 150
and its Multifaceted Aspects in Constructing Sign Language Corpora:
Questions, Answers, Further Problems
Siegmund Prillwitz, Thomas Hanke, Susanne König, Reiner Konrad, Gabriele 159
Langer, Arvid Schwarz: DGS corpus project – Development of a corpus based
electronic dictionary German Sign Language / German
Adam Schembri: British Sign Language Corpus Project: Open Access Archives 165
and the Observer’s Paradox
Sandrine Schwartz: Tactile sign language corpora: capture and annotation issues 170
Jérémie Segouat, Annelies Braffort, Laurence Bolot, Annick Choisier, Michael 174
Filhol, Cyril Verrecchia: Building 3D French Sign Language lexicon
Saori Tanaka, Yosuke Matsusaka, Kaoru Nakazono: Interface Development for 178
Computer Assisted Sign Language Learning: Compact Version of CASLL
Inge Zwitserlood, Asli Özyürek, Pamela Perniss: Annotation of sign and gesture 185
cross-linguistically

iv
Author Index

Álvarez Sánchez, Patricia 9 Leeson, Lorraine 112
Báez Montero, Inmaculada C. 9 Lefebvre-Albaret, François 123
Bergmeister, Elisabeth 105 Lillo-Martin, Diane 129
Beuzeville, Louise de 13 Mak, Joe 17
Bolot, Laurence 174 Mascret, Bruno 138
Bornholdt, Silke 105 Matsusaka, Yosuke 178
Braffort, Annelies 28, 174 Mesch, Johanna 134
Campr, Pavel 78, 88 Moreau, Cédric 138
Cat Fung, H-M 17, 22 Mulrooney, Kristin 54
Chen Pichler, Deborah 129 Nagashima, Yuji 141
Chételat-Pelé, Emilie 28 Nakazono, Kaoru 141, 178
Chiari, Isabella 150 Ney, Hermann 50
Choisier, Annick 174 Nolan, Brian 112
Crasborn, Onno 33, 39, 44 Nyst, Victoria 145
Dalle, Patrice 123 Özyürek, Asli 185
Dotter, Franz 105 Perniss, Pamela 185
Dreuw, Philippe 50 Pirker, Anita 105
Dudis, Paul 54 Pizzuto, Elena Antinoro 150
Efthimiou, Eleni 58 Prillwitz, Siegmund 159
Fernández Soneira, Ana Maria 9 Raike, Antti 101
Filhol, Michael 174 Rainò, Päivi 101
Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita 58 Rossini, Paolo 150
Gianni, Frederick 123 Schembri, Adam 165
Hanke, Thomas 64, 159 Schwartz, Sandrine 170
Hausch, Christian 105 Schwarz, Arvid 159
Herrmann, Annika 68 Segouat, Jérémie 174
Heßmann, Jens 74 Skant, Andrea 105
Hilzensauerm Marlene 105 Sloetjes, Han 39
Hrúz, Marek 78, 88 Storz, Jakob 64
Jantunen, Tommi 101 Sze, Felix 22
Johnston, Trevor 82 Takkinen, Ritva 101
Kanis, Jakub 88 Tanaka, Saori 178
König, Lutz 94 Tang, Gladys 17, 22
König, Susanne 94, 159 Terauchi, Mina 141
Konrad, Reiner 94, 159 Unterberger, Natalie 105
Koskela, Markus 101 Vaupel, Meike 74
Krammer, Claudia 105 Véronis, Jean 28
Krňoul, Zdeněk 88 Verrecchia, Cyril 174
Laakson, Jorma 101 Wallin, Lars 134
Lam, Scholastica 17, 22 Whitworth, Cecily 54
Langdon, Clifton 54 Železný, Miloš 78, 88
Langer, Gabriele 94, 159 Zwitserlood, Inge 44, 185

v
Editors’ Preface

This collection of papers stems from the third workshop in a series on “the representation and
processing of sign languages”. The first took place in 2004 (Lisbon, Portugal), the second in 2006
(Genova, Italy). All workshops were tied to Language Resources and Evaluation Conferences
(LREC), the 2008 one taking place in Marrakech, Morocco. While there has been occasional
attention for signed languages in the main LREC conference, the main focus there is on written and
spoken forms of spoken languages. The wide field of language technology has been the focus of the
LREC conferences, where academic and commercial research and applications meet. It will be clear
to every researcher that there is a wide gap between our knowledge of spoken versus signed
languages. This holds not only for language technology, where difference in modality and the
absence of commonly used writing systems for signed languages obviously pose new challenges,
but also for the linguistic knowledge that can be used in language technologies.

The domains addressed in the two previous sign language workshops have thus been fairly wide,
and we see the same variety in the present proceedings volume. However, where the first and the
second workshop had a strong focus on sign synthesis and automatic recognition, the theme of the
third workshop concerns construction and exploitation of sign language corpora.

Recent technological developments allow sign language researchers to create relatively large video
corpora of sign language use that were unimaginable ten years ago. Several national projects are
currently underway, and more are planned. In the present volume, sign language linguistics
researchers and researchers from the area of sign language technologies share their experiences
from completed and ongoing efforts: what are the technical problems that were encountered and the
solutions created, what are the linguistic decisions that were taken?

At the same time, the contributions also look into the future. How can we establish standards for
linguistic tagging and metadata, and how can we add sign language specifics to well-established or
emerging best practices from the general language resource community? How can we work towards
(semi-) automatic annotation by computer recognition from video? These are all questions of
interest to both linguists and language technology experts: the sign language corpora that are being
created are needed for more reliable linguistic analyses, for studies on sociolinguistic variation, and
for building tools that can recognize sign language use from video or generate animations of sign
language use.

The contributions composing this volume are presented in alphabetical order by the first author. For
the reader’s convenience, an author index is provided as well.

We would like to thank the programme committee that helped us reviewing the abstracts for the
workshop:

Penny Boyes Braem; Annelies Braffort; Patrice Dalle; Evita Fotinea; Jens Heßmann; Trevor
Johnston; Lorraine Leeson; Adam Schembri; Graham Turner; Meike Vaupel; Chiara Vettori

Finally, we would like to point the reader to the proceedings of the previous two workshops, which
form important resources in a growing field of research; both works were made available as PDF
files for participants of the workshop.

O. Streiter & C. Vettori (2004, Eds.) From SignWriting to Image Processing. Information
techniques and their implications for teaching, documentation and communication. [Proceedings
vi
of the Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages. 4th International
Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2004, Lisbon.] Paris: ELRA.

C. Vettori (2006, Ed.) Lexicographic Matters and Didactic Scenarios. [Proceedings of the 2nd
Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages. 5th International
Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC 2006, Genova.] Paris: ELRA.

We hope the present volume will stimulate further research by making the presentations accessible
for those who could not attend the workshop.

The Editors,

Onno Crasborn, Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
Eleni Efthimiou, Institute for Language and Speech Processing (GR)
Thomas Hanke, University of Hamburg (DE)
Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd, Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities & Social Sciences (NL)
Inge Zwitserlood, Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
vii
Workshop Papers
3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages
Linguistic, Sociological and Technical Difficulties in the Development of a
Spanish Sign Language (LSE) Corpus
Patricia Álvarez Sánchez, Inmaculada C. Báez Montero, Ana Fernández Soneira
Universidad de Vigo – Research Group on Sign Languages1
Lagoas-Marcosende (36310) Vigo
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Abstract
The creation of a Spanish Sign Language corpus has been, since 1995 until 2000, one of the main aims of our Sign Languages Research
Group at the University of Vigo. This research has the aim of helping us in the description of LSE and developing tools for research:
labeling, transcription, etc. We obtained language samples from 85 informants whose analysis raised several difficulties, both technical
and sociolinguistic.
At this stage, with renewed energy, we have taken up again our initial aims, crossing the technical, linguistic and sociological obstacles
that had hindered our proposal to reach its end.
In our panel we will present, apart from the difficulties that we have encountered, the new proposals for solving and overcoming them,
thus, finally reaching our initial aim: to develop a public Spanish Sign Language corpus that could be consulted online.
We will go into details with the criteria of versatility and representativity which condition the technical aspects; the sociolinguistic
criteria for selecting type of discourses and informants; the labels for marking the corpus and the utilities that we pretend to give the
corpus, not only centered in the use of linguistic data for the quantitative and qualitative research of the LSE, but also centered in the
use for teaching.

1. General Approach exploitation of this type of linguistic resource.” (A, Martí,

The study of LSE should not be dealt with in a different 1999)
manner to that of any other oral language. It will be
2.1. Aims
mandatory to have a textual corpus. The production of a
sign language has a kinetic nature. Its reception is visual, Our work was focused on obtaining a LSE textual corpus of
so the conversations in sign language have to be registered Galician signers from which to start the research on LSE.
in video formats. These were our initial researching aims:
Our contribution to the congress, in the form of a panel, is a) Starting the description of LSE
divided into three sections that correspond with the three b) Determining which are the relevant linguistic units in SL
stages of the development of our corpus. Each step is c) Knowing the grammatical relational processes
marked by a general reflection. d) Developing tools for research: labeling, transcription, etc
The first stage covers our group work from 1995 until 2000
and it represents the beginning of the process. We will 2.2. Corpus features
present subsequently, the aims set, the steps made for the We considered these the main features for creating a
actual conception of the corpus and the difficulties corpus:
encountered. - It must contain real data
The second phase goes from 2000 till 2007. It was stressed
- It must constitute an irreplaceable basis for linguistic
by an analysis process of the work done, and
description
reconsiderations on our basis due to the problems at the - It must be completed with computing support in order to
first stage. We will here present the data obtained and the make easy its use.
new goals that we set. - It must gather:
The third and last stage corresponds with the present time.
a) Informants data
It is the time of showing our advances and the decisions b) Different types of discourse samples
made on the linguistic, sociolinguistic and technical sides. c) Wide range of topics depending on the type of
discourse we want to obtain, etc.
2. Initial Work
- It must be transcribed in Spanish glossas (conventions
“Linguistic corpora have come to fill a privileged position adapted from Klima & Bellugi, 1979) and subtitled in
because they constitute a valuable source of information written language.
for the creation of dictionaries, computational lexicon and
grammars. (…) As a result, a new discipline appears: 2.3. Process stages
CORPUS LINGUISTICS, aimed at the processing and We have divided into seven stages the process of creating
our corpus:

1 http://webs.uvigo.es/lenguadesignos/sordos
9
3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages
6%
a) Tool design for the creation of a corpus 16%
b) Criteria for the selection of informants
21-34 years
c) Creation of a database of informants’ details
35-50 years
d) Collection of language samples
> 50 years
e) Data storage
78%
f) Data labeling and marking
g) Transcription and notation systems
2.4. Difficulties in the process Figure 1: Distribution of informants by age group.

The difficulties that aroused throughout the research
Distribution of informants by age group:
process are:
From 21 to 35 years: 25
a) The lack of a research tradition on Sign Languages in
From 36 to 50 years: 5
Corpus Linguistics forces us to solve problems from the
Over 50 years: 2
very beginning:
Total: 32 interviews.
- How to delimit units in sign languages.

- How to label the different formations for their later 5%

analysis. 31%
Guided monologue
- Other related issues.

b) Creation of social networks in the Deaf community with Semiguided interview

the aim of avoiding the social identity of our informants to Public discourse

be threatened. 64%

c) Technical restrictions. We have to select appropriate
Figure 2: Distribution of language samples by gender types.
material in order to avoid problems in compatibility

between the different devices (video cameras. video player,
Distribution by gender types:
computers, software…)
Guided monologue - 23 minutes
The signer is asked for a description of his family, his house
3. Analysis and Reconsiderations
and a short anecdote.
“(…) the paradox exists that once a system is available for
Semiguided interviews - 271 minutes
its use, its technology becomes obsolete with regard to the
Signers are interviewed on several topics, depending on
one that is operative at that moment and in many cases, it
their age, sex, preferences, etc. Thus, the discourse is more
must be reprogrammed” (A, Martí, 1999)
spontaneous.
After these first steps, it was time to analyse the gathered
Public discourse - 130 minutes.
data. For this purpose, we created a database of informants
Conferences and round tables give us a more programmed
which we are going to present now.
and formal style.
3.1. Where did we collect our data?
3.2. Reconsiderations
We have developed an interview filing card with the
After the research, we had to reconsiderate certain issues
purpose of ascertaining the social and linguistic profile of
for a better development of our corpus. We will now sum
the Galician deaf people that were later registered in
these up:
videotapes.
a) Revision of the projects carried out in other countries.
This is the data gathered from our 85 informants:
b) Creation of social networks:
a) Identification: name, address and phone (for future
Inside the Deaf community:
contacts);
Preparation of the members of the community for the
b) Origin and social environment: place and date of birth,
carrying out of the interviews
age of deafness occurrence, deafness degree, deaf/hearing
In the institutions:
family, job of closest family members;
Participation in national networks for research in order
c) School: degree and type of studies, special/ordinary
to contact with the Deaf community all over Spain.
school, use/absence of SL in school;
Support of the LSE Standardization Center in the
d) Linguistic skills: in LSE, oral Spanish, lip-reading,
creation of the corpus.
written Spanish;
e) Place of residence: in order to reflect and control 4. For the time being
linguistic variation.
“If our research manages to correct mistaken or unsuitable

information, we will have made a good service to

linguistics; however, this type of study usually needs for

certain knowledge and experiences that do not correspond

with the young researcher. (López Morales, 1994, 25)”

At this stage, with renewed energy, we have taken up again

our initial aims, crossing the technical, linguistic and

10