DOCSLIB.ORG

Capturing the Language of the Deaf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Capturing the Language of the Deaf Linguistics Capturing the Language of the Deaf Dr. Paweł Rutkowski insight University of Warsaw magine we were born in a society in which every- one around us communicates in a language we Idon’t understand. What’s more, it’s a language we are not even able to experience with our senses. Now imagine that in spite of this, everyone expects us to master that language in order to help us live “easier,” so that we can function “normally” in society. So that we do not have to be different. This is how, in very simple terms, we can describe the situation faced by Paweł Rutkowski, the Deaf in various countries, including in Poland. Note the preference for the term Deaf (or Pol- PhD is the creator of the ish: Głusi), rather than hearing-impaired (Polish: Section for Sign niesłyszący). While the hearing community may see Linguistics at the the term hearing-impaired (or niesłyszący) as neutral, University of Warsaw. He the Deaf want to be seen through the prism of what specializes in the syntax they are, rather than what they are NOT or in terms of natural languages, of how they are perceived to be defective. Writing the with particular emphasis word Deaf (or Głusi) with a capital letter is intended to on Polish Sign Language define deafness as a major indicator of a certain cul- (PLM). He has authored tural and linguistic identity (similar to other minority or co-authored more groups in Poland, such as Silesians or Kashubians), than a hundred research publications and not to stigmatize their disabilities. and textbooks. He has Deafness is rarely passed on genetically, and so over held scholarships at 90% of deaf children have hearing parents. Deaf chil- Yale University, Wayne dren therefore usually spend their childhood tediously State University, and learning the language of the hearing. For them, it’s Oxford University. like learning a foreign language. The Deaf in Poland A member of the Polish attempt to master the intricacies of the Polish language Sign Language Council in the same way that hearing Poles attempt to learn affiliated with the Polish English, German, or Chinese. With one difference: the Ministry of Family, Labor, Deaf understand this kind of communication main- and Social Policy. ly from lip reading. Through incessant attempts and [email protected] repetitions they try to control their own speech organs THE MAGAZINE OF THE PASK 60 4/52/2016 THE FIRST-EVER CORPUS OF POLISH SIGN LANGUAGE (PJM) Polish Sign Language (PJM) is a natural communication system that has been evolving for two centuries. It is at the heart of the identity and culture of the Deaf community in Poland, but it is often marginalized and neglected. It first came under serious linguistic scrutiny not long ago, and more systematic research on it has been initiated in recent years by a team of researchers at the Section for Sign Linguistics at the University of Warsaw. THE MAGAZINE 61 OF THE PAS 4/52/2016 Insight Linguistics Communication in so as to produce sounds which will be understood by sign language is not the hearing. Because it is the latter who dictate the limited to just making standards for communication. signs with one’s hands, But even years of arduous practice will still not but it also includes change the fact that the Deaf are most often perceived facial expressions, as different. Even if they are able to communicate body movements, and pointing. through speech, it is a very difficult means of com- munication for them and it is very often one-sided, geared towards the needs of the hearing person. So it’s no wonder that the Deaf often feel alienated. This feeling disappears, however, when they are surround- ed by people who use sign language. Answering some frequent ASL, used in the US and Canada), others are limited questions to small rural communities (like many local sign lan- guages in Africa or Asia). Usually the Deaf from one When it comes to the Deaf, the vast majority of the country speak the same sign language, but that does hearing population express their sympathy, compas- not mean that it derives from the spoken language sion and a desire to help. Good intentions, however, used in that country. In fact, British Sign Language cannot take the place of accurate knowledge. All sorts and American Sign Language have nothing in com- of misconceptions and stereotypes influence the way mon, even though the hearing people in the UK and the hearing perceive the Deaf and their language. Be- the US share the same spoken language. The language low are some of the typical questions asked of sign spoken by the Deaf in Poland is Polish Sign Language language researchers by laymen: (commonly referred to by the Polish abbreviation PJM, for polski język migowy). Is sign language just about showing letters by hand, one after another? So do the Deaf in Poland sign “in Polish”? No. Sign-language signs are not like the words of No. The Language of the Deaf community in Poland, a spoken language. They are not made up of letters, called Polish Sign Language (PJM), is not just spoken which after all represent sounds. Rather, each sign cor- Polish language translated into signs. Rather, it is a lan- responds to a single concept (such as HOME, WORK, guage all of its own, unrelated to spoken Polish, with NICE), and thus one sign resembles one word of spo- its own grammar. The question How old are you? is in ken language, not individual sounds or letters. Polish Ile masz lat? (literally: how-many you-have years). In PJM, the same sentence is asked with this series of Do all Deaf people around the world speak the signs: YOU LIFE HOW-MANY. This one small example same language? serves to illustrate how the word order and the word/ No. There are about two hundred sign languages in sign choices are very different in the two languages. For the world. Some are used by hundreds of thousands of at least two hundred years (since the establishment of people (as in the case of American Sign Language or Poland’s first school for deaf children), PJM has been de- THE MAGAZINE OF THE PAS 62 4/52/2016 THE FIRST-EVER CORPUS OF POLISH SIGN LANGUAGE (PJM) language may also show different signs with each hand simultaneously. In spoken language, sentences are one-dimensional strings of words composed of sounds. A human being is not able to simultaneously utter two different sounds and therefore can’t say two words at the same time. This means that spoken lan- guages are easy to write down as sequences of letters. In sign languages it is much more difficult. Nowadays, video recording is the simplest solution. Can everything that can be expressed in spoken language be expressed in sign language? Yes. Deaf people can refer not only to the immedi- veloping and evolving spontaneously. Today it is a fully ate present (“here and now”), but also to abstract formed natural language, which, due to its uniqueness concepts, feelings, unrealistic and hypothetical situ- and being completely different from the Polish language, ations. What’s more, sign language has its own stylistic was ignored by the hearing population for long decades. variations (precise, official, or slang sign language). You can compose poetry and jokes in sign language, Is signing a sort of pantomime, understandable and it even has profanity. Just like spoken languag- to everyone? es, PJM has regional and community-based versions. No. Sign languages use conventionalized signs, which The sign language of Poles from the north is different means that each one must be learned individually in from those in the south. Young people use slang, while order to understand it (just like individual words in various professional groups use industry jargon. It can spoken languages). The meaning of a sign in sign lan- therefore be said that PJM, like any other language, guage is not obvious just from its shape. For instance, lives and evolves along with its users. one sign in PJM, resembling a military salute, actually refers to the toilet, which is a meaning a hearing person Many more examples could be given of basic ques- would certainly never have guessed. Moreover, simi- tions, the answers to which the general public in Poland lar signs may have completely different meanings in remains totally unaware of. Although the Deaf are a mi- various sign languages; for instance the sign meaning nority group living amidst us, they and their language HARD OF HEARING in PJM in fact means HORSE in are a completely foreign subject to most hearing Poles Czech Sign Language, and the sign for TO KNOW in (unlike in the case of other minority groups and lan- PJM will mean BOY in German Sign Language. guages in the country, such as German, Lithuanian, etc.) But does it have to be so? In countries such as the US, Can sign language be written down? UK, and Sweden there is much more public awareness Yes, although it’s not easy. One of the most distinc- when it comes to this topic. Many hearing people with- tive traits of sign language is its three-dimensionality. out any family connection to the Deaf community, such This means that the signs are variously positioned in as Lady Gaga, are learning American Sign Language. space and can move within it. A person using sign It appears frequently in popular culture. Sign language THE MAGAZINE 63 OF THE PAS 4/52/2016 Insight Linguistics has been featured in cartoons like the Simpsons and of data collected in the form of videos meant to serve Smurfs.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Learn to Use Signpuddle 1.0 on The
    Some Dictionaries: ™ SignPuddle Online American Sign Language www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Arabic Sign Languages Brazilian Sign Language British Sign Language Colombian Sign Language Czech Sign Language Danish Sign Language Finnish Sign Language Flemish Sign Language French Sign Language German Sign Language Greek Sign Language International Sign Languages Irish Sign Language Italian Sign Language Japanese Sign Language Maltese Sign Language Come Splash in a Sign Puddle! Netherlands Sign Language 1. FREE on the web! Nicaraguan Sign Language Northern Ireland Sign Language 2. Search Sign Language Dictionaries. Norwegian Sign Language 3. Create your own signs and add them. Polish Sign Language 4. Send email in SignWriting®. Quebec Sign Language 5. Translate words to SignWriting. Spanish Sign Language 6. Create documents with SignWriting. Swiss Sign Languages 7. Have fun sharing signs on the internet! Taiwan Sign Language ...and others... http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Search by Words 1. Click on the icon: Search by Words 2. In the Search field: Type a word or a letter. 3. Press the Search button. 4. All the signs that use that word will list for you in SignWriting. 5. You can then copy the sign, or drag and drop it, into other documents. http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Search by Signs 1. Click on the icon: Search by Signs 2. In the Search field: Type a word or a letter. 3. Press the Search button. 4. The signs will list in small size. 5. Click on the small sign you want, and a larger version will appear... http://www.SignBank.org/signpuddle Search by Symbols 1.
    [Show full text]
  • 3D Symbol Base Translation and Synthesis of Czech Sign Speech
    SPECOM'2006, St. Petersburg, 25-29 June 2006 3D Symbol Base Translation and Synthesis of Czech Sign Speech Zdenekˇ Krnoul,ˇ Jakub Kanis, Milosˇ Zeleznˇ y,´ Ludekˇ Muller¨ and Petr C´ısarˇ University of West Bohemia, Department of Cybernetics Univerzitn´ı 8, Plzen,ˇ 306 14, Czech Republic fzdkrnoul, jkanis, zelezny, muller, [email protected] Abstract synthesis of animation makes the parsing of symbols and also uses geometric model of human for the final rendering. Anima- This paper presents primary results of translation spoken tion technique enables the complete articulation of all fingers Czech to Signed Czech and a synthesis of signs by the com- and both arms. puter animation. The synthesis of animation employs a sym- bolic notation. An automatic process of synthesis generates the articulation of hands from this notation. The translation system 2. Related works of translation and is built on the statistical ground. For the notation of the new synthesis systems signs, the graphic editor is designed. In principle, there are two ways how to solve the synthesis of 1. Introduction sign language by the computer. The first of them can be called data driven synthesis and the second synthesis from the sym- The barrier in the communication between hearing and deaf bolic formulation. The principles of the translation system can people should make everyday complication. The problem is that be divided in similar way. We can either implement the trans- hearing people have bad familiarity of sign language and deaf lation of written word to sequences of signs by set of linguistic with the structure of spoken language.
    [Show full text]
  • Prayer Cards | Joshua Project
    Pray for the Nations Pray for the Nations Abkhaz in Ukraine Abor in India Population: 1,500 Population: 1,700 World Popl: 307,600 World Popl: 1,700 Total Countries: 6 Total Countries: 1 People Cluster: Caucasus People Cluster: South Asia Tribal - other Main Language: Abkhaz Main Language: Adi Main Religion: Non-Religious Main Religion: Unknown Status: Minimally Reached Status: Minimally Reached Evangelicals: 1.00% Evangelicals: Unknown % Chr Adherents: 20.00% Chr Adherents: 16.36% Scripture: New Testament Scripture: Complete Bible www.joshuaproject.net www.joshuaproject.net Source: Apsuwara - Wikimedia "Declare his glory among the nations." Psalm 96:3 "Declare his glory among the nations." Psalm 96:3 Pray for the Nations Pray for the Nations Achuar Jivaro in Ecuador Achuar Jivaro in Peru Population: 7,200 Population: 400 World Popl: 7,600 World Popl: 7,600 Total Countries: 2 Total Countries: 2 People Cluster: South American Indigenous People Cluster: South American Indigenous Main Language: Achuar-Shiwiar Main Language: Achuar-Shiwiar Main Religion: Ethnic Religions Main Religion: Ethnic Religions Status: Minimally Reached Status: Minimally Reached Evangelicals: 1.00% Evangelicals: 2.00% Chr Adherents: 14.00% Chr Adherents: 15.00% Scripture: New Testament Scripture: New Testament www.joshuaproject.net www.joshuaproject.net Source: Gina De Leon Source: Gina De Leon "Declare his glory among the nations." Psalm 96:3 "Declare his glory among the nations." Psalm 96:3 Pray for the Nations Pray for the Nations Adi in India Adi Gallong in India
    [Show full text]
  • What Corpus-Based Research on Negation in Auslan and PJM Tells Us About Building and Using Sign Language Corpora
    What Corpus-Based Research on Negation in Auslan and PJM Tells Us About Building and Using Sign Language Corpora Anna Kuder1, Joanna Filipczak1, Piotr Mostowski1, Paweł Rutkowski1, Trevor Johnston2 1Section for Sign Linguistics, Faculty of the Polish Studies, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland 2Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2109 {anna.kuder, j.filipczak, piotr.mostowski, p.rutkowski}@uw.edu.pl, [email protected] Abstract In this paper, we would like to discuss our current work on negation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and PJM (Polish Sign Language, polski język migowy) as an example of experience in using sign language corpus data for research purposes. We describe how we prepared the data for two detailed empirical studies, given similarities and differences between the Australian and Polish corpus projects. We present our findings on negation in both languages, which turn out to be surprisingly similar. At the same time, what the two corpus studies show seems to be quite different from many previous descriptions of sign language negation found in the literature. Some remarks on how to effectively plan and carry out the annotation process of sign language texts are outlined at the end of the present paper, as they might be helpful to other researchers working on designing a corpus. Our work leads to two main conclusions: (1) in many cases, usage data may not be easily reconciled with intuitions and assumptions about how sign languages function and what their grammatical characteristics are like, (2) in order to obtain representative and reliable data from large-scale corpora one needs to plan and carry out the annotation process very thoroughly.
    [Show full text]
  • IFHOHYP Newsletter 1/2007
    IFHOHYP NEWS Summer 2007 The International Federation of Hard of Hearing Young People Magazine New Trends in Educating Hearing Impaired People by Svetoslava Saeva (Bulgaria) In the period 21-25 March 2007 an International Contact Seminar New Trends in Educating Hearing Impaired People was held for the first time in Bratislava, Slovakia (http://akademia.exs.sk). The seminar is realized as a main activity of a project of the European Culture Society, Bratislava and is financially supported by: Youth Programme – Action 5, Open Society Fund and Austrian Culture Forum. All activities were interpreted into English, Slovak, Slovak Sign language and International Sign. The seminar was under the auspices of Mr. Dušan Čaplovič – Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Slovakia for Knowledge-Based Society, European Affairs, Human Rights and Minorities and Mrs. Viera Tomanová – Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Family in Slovakia. The seminar was divided into two main parts concerning activities in the whole period. Svetoslava (in the right) The first part was on 22 March when Open Public Seminar was realized in the capital of Slovakia – Bratislava. There were more than 110 people from different countries that took part in the seminar. Many of the participants were hearing impaired. There were many interesting presentations about technologies and innovations in education and preparation for universities as well as for the labour market of hearing impaired and deaf people. Mr. Andrej Buday – a Slovak project manager and president of the Association of Driving Schools in Slovak Republic shared very valuable experience about teaching deaf and hearing impaired people how to drive correctly and safely.
    [Show full text]
  • Stakeholders' Views on Use of Sign Language Alone As a Medium Of
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION Vol.33, No.1, 2018 Stakeholders’ Views on Use of Sign Language Alone as a Medium of Instruction for the Hearing Impaired in Zambian Primary Schools Mandyata Joseph, Kamukwamba Kapansa Lizzie, School of Education, University of Zambia ([email protected]) Abstract The study examined views of stakeholders on the use of Sign Language as a medium of instruction in the learning of hearing impaired in primary schools of Lusaka, Zambia. A case study design supported by qualitative methods was used. The sample size was 57, consisting of teachers, pupils, curriculum specialist, education standards officers, lecturers and advocators on the rights of persons with disabilities. Purposive sampling techniques to selected the sample, interview and focused group discussion guides were tools for data collection. The study revealed significant differences in views of stakeholders on use of Sign Language alone as medium of instruction. While most participants felt sign language alone was ideal for learning, others believed learners needed exposure to total communication (combination of oral and sign language) to learn better. Those who felt using sign language alone was better, believed the practice had more positive effects on learning and that use of oral language, total communication often led to confusion in classroom communication among learners with hearing impairments. Participants who opposed use of sign language alone were of the view teachers: were ill-prepared; signs were limited in scope; education system lacked instructional language policy and learning environment were inappropriate to support use of sign language alone in the learning process. The study recommended strengthening of training of sign language teachers and introduction of sign language as an academic subject before it can be used as the sole medium of classroom instruction in the Zambian primary schools.
    [Show full text]
  • Sign Language Legislation in the European Union 4
    Sign Language Legislation in the European Union Mark Wheatley & Annika Pabsch European Union of the Deaf Brussels, Belgium 3 Sign Language Legislation in the European Union All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the authors. ISBN 978-90-816-3390-1 © European Union of the Deaf, September 2012. Printed at Brussels, Belgium. Design: Churchill’s I/S- www.churchills.dk This publication was sponsored by Significan’t Significan’t is a (Deaf and Sign Language led ) social business that was established in 2003 and its Managing Director, Jeff McWhinney, was the CEO of the British Deaf Association when it secured a verbal recognition of BSL as one of UK official languages by a Minister of the UK Government. SignVideo is committed to delivering the best service and support to its customers. Today SignVideo provides immediate access to high quality video relay service and video interpreters for health, public and voluntary services, transforming access and career prospects for Deaf people in employment and empowering Deaf entrepreneurs in their own businesses. www.signvideo.co.uk 4 Contents Welcome message by EUD President Berglind Stefánsdóttir ..................... 6 Foreword by Dr Ádám Kósa, MEP ................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Marcin Mizak Sign Language – a Real and Natural Language
    LUBELSKIE MATERIAŁY NEOFILOLOGICZNE NR 35, 2011 Marcin Mizak Sign Language – A Real and Natural Language 1. Introduction It seems reasonable to begin a discussion on the “realness” and “naturalness” of sign language by comparing it to other human languages of whose “real” and “natural” status there can be no doubt whatsoever. They will be our reference point in the process of establishing the status of sign language. The assumption being made in this paper is that all real and natural languages share certain characteristics with one another, that they all behave in a certain way and that certain things happen to all of them. If it transpires that the same characteristics and behaviours are also shared by sign language and that whatever happens to real and natural languages also happens to sign language then the inevitable conclusion follows: sign language is indeed a real and natural language 1. 2. The number of languages in the world One of the first things to be noticed about real and natural languages is their great number. Ethnologue: Languages of the World , one of the most reliable and comprehensive encyclopedic reference publications, catalogues in its 16 th edition of 2009 6,909 known living languages in 1 The designation “sign language,” as used in this article, refers to the languages used within communities of the deaf. American Sign Language, for example, is a sign language in this sense. Artificially devised systems, such as Signed English, or Manual English, are not sign languages in this sense. Sign Language – A Real and Natural Language 51 the world today 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Dictionary of the Slovenian Sign Language on the WWW
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Ljubljana Computer and Information Science ePrints.fri Dictionary of the Slovenian Sign Language on the WWW Luka Cempre, Aleksander Beˇsir, and Franc Solina Computer Vision Laboratory, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana Trˇzaˇska cesta 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia lukaslo,alex.besir @gmail.com, [email protected] { http://sszj.fri.uni-lj.si} Abstract. The article describes technical and user-interface issues of transferring the contents and functionality of the CD-ROM version of the Slovenian sing language dictionary to the web. The dictionary of Slovenian sign language consist of video clips showing the demonstra- tion of signs that deaf people use for communication, text description of the words corresponding to the signs and pictures illustrating the same word/sign. A new technical solution—a video sprite—for concatenating subsections of video clips necessary for their smooth display on most available platforms was developed. The contents of the dictionary which were re-edited are combined also with other resources available on the web. Added were also new exercises for learning the sign language. Keywords: sign language, multimedia dictionary, web application, video player, video sprite. 1Introduction The fastest way in which deaf people can communicate is by using sign language using their hands. Facial expressions and body posture which accompany signing can modify the basic meaning of a hand gesture. Sign languages have emerged naturally in deaf communities alongside or among spoken languages already in the ancient past [1].
    [Show full text]
  • Sign Languages
    200-210 Sign languages 200 Arık, Engin: Describing motion events in sign languages. – PSiCL 46/4, 2010, 367-390. 201 Buceva, Pavlina; Čakărova, Krasimira: Za njakoi specifiki na žestomimičnija ezik, izpolzvan ot sluchouvredeni lica. – ESOL 7/1, 2009, 73-79 | On some specific features of the sign language used by children with hearing disorders. 202 Dammeyer, Jesper: Tegnsprogsforskning : om tegnsprogets bidrag til viden om sprog. – SSS 3/2, 2012, 31-46 | Sign language research : on the contribution of sign language to the knowledge of languages | E. ab | Electronic publ. 203 Deaf around the world : the impact of language / Ed. by Gaurav Mathur and Donna Jo Napoli. – Oxford : Oxford UP, 2011. – xviii, 398 p. 204 Fischer, Susan D.: Sign languages East and West. – (34), 3-15. 205 Formational units in sign languages / Ed. by Rachel Channon ; Harry van der Hulst. – Berlin : De Gruyter Mouton ; Nijmegen : Ishara Press, 2011. – vi, 346 p. – (Sign language typology ; 3) | Not analyzed. 206 Franklin, Amy; Giannakidou, Anastasia; Goldin-Meadow, Susan: Negation, questions, and structure building in a homesign system. – Cognition 118/3, 2011, 398-416. 207 Gebarentaalwetenschap : een inleiding / Onder red. van Anne E. Baker ; Beppie van den Bogaerde ; Roland Pfau ; Trude Schermer. – Deventer : Van Tricht, 2008. – 328 p. 208 Kendon, Adam: A history of the study of Australian Aboriginal sign languages. – (50), 383-402. 209 Kendon, Adam: Sign languages of Aboriginal Australia : cultural, semi- otic and communicative perspectives. – Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 2013. – 562 p. | First publ. 1988; cf. 629. 210 Kudła, Marcin: How to sign the other : on attributive ethnonyms in sign languages. – PFFJ 2014, 81-92 | Pol.
    [Show full text]
  • Prepub Uncorrected Version
    “LeeSchoenfeld-book” — 2021/1/11 — 15:30 — page 198 — #206 CHAPTER 8 Clause-Initial Vs in Sign Languages: Scene-Setters DONNA JO NAPOLI AND RACHEL SUTTON–SPENCE 8.1 INTRODUCTION Linguists often talk about the skeletal organization of a clause as involving three major elements: S, V, and sometimes O, where often that organization is taken as a major typological classifier (Greenberg 1963, and many since). With that terminology, this chapter concerns the semantics of clauses that have V as their first articulated major element in the sign languages of Brazil (Libras), Australia (Auslan), Britain (BSL), the Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal or NGT), and Sweden (Svenskt teckenspråk or STS). We will show that clauses in which the predicate and all its arguments are separately and manually expressed begin with the V only under well- circumscribed semantic conditions. We argue that the findings here are due to the iconic nature of sign languages and, thus, should hold of sign languages in general. 8.2 GENERAL CAVEATS Talking about clauses in sign languages is problematic because sign linguists have not settled on consistent syntactic criteria for determining what counts as a clause or a complete sentence (Crasborn 2007; Jartunen 2008). Com- plications arise especially when there is repetition of elements, particularly repetition of predicates (Fischer and Janis 1990; Kegl 1990; Matsuoka 1997, 1999; Bø 2010). We do, however, use the term clause in this chapter, where we rely on two factors in the analysis of our data. First, we rely on the semantic Parameters of Predicate Fronting. Vera Lee-Schoenfeld, Oxford University Press (2021).
    [Show full text]
  • Quantitative Survey of the State of the Art in Sign Language Recognition
    QUANTITATIVE SURVEY OF THE STATE OF THE ART IN SIGN LANGUAGE RECOGNITION Oscar Koller∗ Speech and Language Microsoft Munich, Germany [email protected] September 1, 2020 ABSTRACT This work presents a meta study covering around 300 published sign language recognition papers with over 400 experimental results. It includes most papers between the start of the field in 1983 and 2020. Additionally, it covers a fine-grained analysis on over 25 studies that have compared their recognition approaches on RWTH-PHOENIX-Weather 2014, the standard benchmark task of the field. Research in the domain of sign language recognition has progressed significantly in the last decade, reaching a point where the task attracts much more attention than ever before. This study compiles the state of the art in a concise way to help advance the field and reveal open questions. Moreover, all of this meta study’s source data is made public, easing future work with it and further expansion. The analyzed papers have been manually labeled with a set of categories. The data reveals many insights, such as, among others, shifts in the field from intrusive to non-intrusive capturing, from local to global features and the lack of non-manual parameters included in medium and larger vocabulary recognition systems. Surprisingly, RWTH-PHOENIX-Weather with a vocabulary of 1080 signs represents the only resource for large vocabulary continuous sign language recognition benchmarking world wide. Keywords Sign Language Recognition · Survey · Meta Study · State of the Art Analysis 1 Introduction Since recently, automatic sign language recognition experiences significantly more attention by the community.
    [Show full text]