SIGN LANGUAGES What Are the Unique Characteristics of Sign
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Technical Report, Vol
CRL Technical Report, Vol. 19 No. 1, March 2007 CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE March 2007 Vol. 19, No. 1 CRL Technical Reports, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla CA 92093-0526 Tel: (858) 534-2536 • E-mail: [email protected] • WWW: http://crl.ucsd.edu/newsletter/current/TechReports/articles.html TECHNICAL REPORT Arab Sign Languages: A Lexical Comparison Kinda Al-Fityani Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego EDITOR’S NOTE The CRL Technical Report replaces the feature article previously published with every issue of the CRL Newsletter. The Newsletter is now limited to announcements and news concerning the CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE. CRL is a research center at the University of California, San Diego that unites the efforts of fields such as Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Computer Science, Sociology, and Philosophy, all who share an interest in language. The Newsletter can be found at http://crl.ucsd.edu/newsletter/current/TechReports/articles.html. The Technical Reports are also produced and published by CRL and feature papers related to language and cognition (distributed via the World Wide Web). We welcome response from friends and colleagues at UCSD as well as other institutions. Please visit our web site at http://crl.ucsd.edu. SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION If you know of others who would be interested in receiving the Newsletter and the Technical Reports, you may add them to our email subscription list by sending an email to [email protected] with the line "subscribe newsletter <email-address>" in the body of the message (e.g., subscribe newsletter [email protected]). -
Sign Language Typology Series
SIGN LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY SERIES The Sign Language Typology Series is dedicated to the comparative study of sign languages around the world. Individual or collective works that systematically explore typological variation across sign languages are the focus of this series, with particular emphasis on undocumented, underdescribed and endangered sign languages. The scope of the series primarily includes cross-linguistic studies of grammatical domains across a larger or smaller sample of sign languages, but also encompasses the study of individual sign languages from a typological perspective and comparison between signed and spoken languages in terms of language modality, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to sign language typology. Interrogative and Negative Constructions in Sign Languages Edited by Ulrike Zeshan Sign Language Typology Series No. 1 / Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages / Ulrike Zeshan (ed.) / Nijmegen: Ishara Press 2006. ISBN-10: 90-8656-001-6 ISBN-13: 978-90-8656-001-1 © Ishara Press Stichting DEF Wundtlaan 1 6525XD Nijmegen The Netherlands Fax: +31-24-3521213 email: [email protected] http://ishara.def-intl.org Cover design: Sibaji Panda Printed in the Netherlands First published 2006 Catalogue copy of this book available at Depot van Nederlandse Publicaties, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag (www.kb.nl/depot) To the deaf pioneers in developing countries who have inspired all my work Contents Preface........................................................................................................10 -
Learning/Teaching Philosophy in Sign Language As a Cultural Issue
DOI: 10.15503/jecs20131-9-19 Journal of Education Culture and Society No. 1_2013 9 Learning/teaching philosophy in sign language as a cultural issue Maria de Fátima Sá Correia [email protected] Orquídea Coelho [email protected] António Magalhães [email protected] Andrea Benvenuto [email protected] Abstract This paper is about the process of learning/teaching philosophy in a class of deaf stu- dents. It starts with a presentation of Portuguese Sign Language that, as with other sign lan- guages, is recognized as a language on equal terms with vocal languages. However, in spite of the recognition of that identity, sign languages have specifi city related to the quadrimodal way of their production, and iconicity is an exclusive quality. Next, it will be argued that according to linguistic relativism - even in its weak version - language is a mould of thought. The idea of Philosophy is then discussed as an area of knowledge in which the author and the language of its production are always present. Finally, it is argued that learning/teaching Philosophy in Sign Language in a class of deaf students is linked to deaf culture and it is not merely a way of overcoming diffi culties with the spoken language. Key words: Bilingual education, Deaf culture, Learning-teaching Philosophy, Portuguese Sign Language. According to Portuguese law (Decreto-Lei 3/2008 de 7 de Janeiro de 2008 e Law 21 de 12 de Maio de 2008), in the “escolas de referência para a educação bilingue de alunos surdos” (EREBAS) (reference schools for bilingual education of deaf stu- dents) deaf students have to attend classes in Portuguese Sign Language. -
Sign Language Endangerment and Linguistic Diversity Ben Braithwaite
RESEARCH REPORT Sign language endangerment and linguistic diversity Ben Braithwaite University of the West Indies at St. Augustine It has become increasingly clear that current threats to global linguistic diversity are not re - stricted to the loss of spoken languages. Signed languages are vulnerable to familiar patterns of language shift and the global spread of a few influential languages. But the ecologies of signed languages are also affected by genetics, social attitudes toward deafness, educational and public health policies, and a widespread modality chauvinism that views spoken languages as inherently superior or more desirable. This research report reviews what is known about sign language vi - tality and endangerment globally, and considers the responses from communities, governments, and linguists. It is striking how little attention has been paid to sign language vitality, endangerment, and re - vitalization, even as research on signed languages has occupied an increasingly prominent posi - tion in linguistic theory. It is time for linguists from a broader range of backgrounds to consider the causes, consequences, and appropriate responses to current threats to sign language diversity. In doing so, we must articulate more clearly the value of this diversity to the field of linguistics and the responsibilities the field has toward preserving it.* Keywords : language endangerment, language vitality, language documentation, signed languages 1. Introduction. Concerns about sign language endangerment are not new. Almost immediately after the invention of film, the US National Association of the Deaf began producing films to capture American Sign Language (ASL), motivated by a fear within the deaf community that their language was endangered (Schuchman 2004). -
Anastasia Bauer the Use of Signing Space in a Shared Signing Language of Australia Sign Language Typology 5
Anastasia Bauer The Use of Signing Space in a Shared Signing Language of Australia Sign Language Typology 5 Editors Marie Coppola Onno Crasborn Ulrike Zeshan Editorial board Sam Lutalo-Kiingi Irit Meir Ronice Müller de Quadros Roland Pfau Adam Schembri Gladys Tang Erin Wilkinson Jun Hui Yang De Gruyter Mouton · Ishara Press The Use of Signing Space in a Shared Sign Language of Australia by Anastasia Bauer De Gruyter Mouton · Ishara Press ISBN 978-1-61451-733-7 e-ISBN 978-1-61451-547-0 ISSN 2192-5186 e-ISSN 2192-5194 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. ” 2014 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Boston/Berlin and Ishara Press, Lancaster, United Kingdom Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck Țȍ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Acknowledgements This book is the revised and edited version of my doctoral dissertation that I defended at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Cologne, Germany in January 2013. It is the result of many experiences I have encoun- tered from dozens of remarkable individuals who I wish to acknowledge. First of all, this study would have been simply impossible without its partici- pants. The data that form the basis of this book I owe entirely to my Yolngu family who taught me with patience and care about this wonderful Yolngu language. -
Language Resources for Spanish - Spanish Sign Language (LSE) Translation
Language Resources for Spanish - Spanish Sign Language (LSE) translation Rubén San-Segundo 1, Verónica López 1, Raquel Martín 1, David Sánchez 2, Adolfo García 2 1Grupo de Tecnología del Habla-Universidad Politécnica de Madrid 2Fundación CNSE Abstract This paper describes the development of a Spanish-Spanish Sign Language (LSE) translation system. Firstly, it describes the first Spanish-Spanish Sign Language (LSE) parallel corpus focused on two specific domains: the renewal of the Identity Document and Driver’s License. This corpus includes more than 4,000 Spanish sentences (in these domains), their LSE translation and a video for each LSE sentence with the sign language representation. This corpus also contains more than 700 sign descriptions in several sign-writing specifications. The translation system developed with this corpus consists of two modules: a Spanish into LSE translation module that is composed of a speech recognizer (for decoding the spoken utterance into a word sequence), a natural language translator (for converting a word sequence into a sequence of signs) and a 3D avatar animation module (for playing back the signs). The second module is a Spanish generator from LSE made up of a visual interface (for specifying a sequence of signs in sign-writing), a language translator (for generating the sequence of words in Spanish) and a text to speech converter. For each language translation, the system uses three technologies: an example-based strategy, a rule-based translation method and a statistical translator. collected -
Providing Accessibility to Hearing-Disabled by a Basque to Sign Language Translation System
Providing Accessibility to Hearing-disabled by a Basque to Sign Language Translation System María del Puy Carretero, Miren Urteaga, Aitor Ardanza, Mikel Eizagirre, Sara García and David Oyarzun Vicomtech-IK4 Research Center, P. Mikeletegi, 57, 20009 San Sebastián, Spain Keywords: Virtual Character, Automatic Translation, Sign Language, LSE, Natural Language Processing. Abstract: Translation between spoken languages and Sign Languages is especially weak regarding minority languages; hence, audiovisual material in these languages is usually out of reach for people with a hearing impairment. This paper presents a domain-specific Basque text to Spanish Sign Language (LSE) translation system. It has a modular architecture with (1) a text-to-Sign Language translation module using a Rule- Based translation approach, (2) a gesture capture system combining two motion capture system to create an internal (3) sign dictionary, (4) an animation engine and a (5) rendering module. The result of the translation is performed by a virtual interpreter that executes the concatenation of the signs according to the grammatical rules in LSE; for a better LSE interpretation, its face and body expressions change according to the emotion to be expressed. A first prototype has been tested by LSE experts with preliminary satisfactory results. 1 INTRODUCTION people are unable to read texts and/or communicate with others by writing. This paper presents a modular platform to translate . Lipreading. Some deaf people can read lips, Basque into LSE. The modularity of the platform but it is not a general ability. Furthermore, allows the input to be audio or text depending on the lipreading alone cannot sufficiently support needs and the available technology of each speech development because visual application case. -
The Signing Space for the Synthesis of Directional Verbs in NGT
The signing space for the synthesis of directional verbs in NGT Shani E. Mende-Gillings Layout: typeset by the author using LATEX. Cover illustration: Unknown artist The signing space for the synthesis of directional verbs in NGT Shani E. Mende-Gillings 11319836 Bachelor thesis Credits: 18 EC Bachelor Kunstmatige Intelligentie University of Amsterdam Faculty of Science Science Park 904 1098 XH Amsterdam Supervisor dr. F. Roelofsen Institute for Logic, Language and Computation Faculty of Science University of Amsterdam Science Park 107 1098 XG Amsterdam 26 June 2020 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Floris Roelofsen for his guidance during this project. I am also very grateful to John Glauert and Richard Kennaway for proving valuable insight into SiGML and the JASigning software. Special thanks go to Inge Zwitserlood, Onno Crasborn and Johan Ros for providing the database of encoded NGT signs, without which this project would not have been possible. Last, but not least, I would also like to thank Marijke Scheffener for providing evaluation material and valuable feedback on the program. Preface This paper describes an individual contribution to a larger project executed in close collaboration with [1] and [2]. The first parts of these three papers describe the overall project and were jointly written, making them largely identical. Section 1.2 describes the global research question, and sections 2 and 3 provide the- oretical context and set up a hypothesis. Section 5.1.1 shows the overall program created, including the components of the other projects, and section 5.2.1 evaluates the result. These previously mentioned chap- ters and sections have been written in joint collaboration with [1] and [2] An introduction to and motivation for the overall project are provided in section 1. -
Passenger Information Using a Sign Language Avatar Individual Travel Assistance for Passengers with Special Needs in Public Transport
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Institute of Transport Research:Publications STRATEGIES Travel Assistance Photo: Helmer Photo: Passenger information using a sign language avatar Individual travel assistance for passengers with special needs in public transport Public transport, passenger information, travel assistance, information and communication technology, reduced mobility, accessibility, inclusion Public transport operators are legally obliged to ensure equal access to transportation services. This includes equal access to information and communication related to those services. Deaf passengers mostly prefer to communicate in sign language. For this reason, the specific needs of deaf and hard-of- hearing passengers still are not adequately addressed – despite the tremendous efforts public transport operators have put in providing accessible communication services to their passengers. This article describes a novel approach to passenger information in sign language based on the automatic translation of natural (written) language text into sign language. This includes the use of a sign language avatar to display the information to deaf and hard-of-hearing passengers. Authors: Lars Schnieder, Georg Tschare ublic transport operators provide nature and causes of disruptions [2]. The tion on the Rights of Persons with Disabili- real-time passenger information passenger information system may be used ties oblige all ratifying countries to ensure via electronic information systems both physically within a transportation hub that persons with disabilities have the in order to keep passengers up to as well as remotely via mobile devices used opportunity to live independently and par- Pdate about the current status of the public by the passengers. -
Sign Classification in Sign Language Corpora with Deep Neural Networks
Sign Classification in Sign Language Corpora with Deep Neural Networks Lionel Pigou, Mieke Van Herreweghe, Joni Dambre Ghent University flionel.pigou, mieke.vanherreweghe, [email protected] Abstract Automatic and unconstrained sign language recognition (SLR) in image sequences remains a challenging problem. The variety of signers, backgrounds, sign executions and signer positions makes the development of SLR systems very challenging. Current methods try to alleviate this complexity by extracting engineered features to detect hand shapes, hand trajectories and facial expressions as an intermediate step for SLR. Our goal is to approach SLR based on feature learning rather than feature engineering. We tackle SLR using the recent advances in the domain of deep learning with deep neural networks. The problem is approached by classifying isolated signs from the Corpus VGT (Flemish Sign Language Corpus) and the Corpus NGT (Dutch Sign Language Corpus). Furthermore, we investigate cross-domain feature learning to boost the performance to cope with the fewer Corpus VGT annotations. Keywords: sign language recognition, deep learning, neural networks 1. Introduction In previous work (Pigou et al., 2015), we showed that deep neural networks are very successful for gesture recognition SLR systems have many different use cases: corpus anno- and gesture spotting in spatiotemporal data. Our developed tation, in hospitals, as a personal sign language learning system is able to recognize 20 different Italian gestures (i.e., assistant or translating daily conversations between signers emblems). We achieved a classification accuracy of 97.23% and non-signers to name a few. Unfortunately, unconstrained in the Chalearn 2014 Looking At People gesture spotting SLR remains a big challenge. -
A Lexical Comparison of South African Sign Language and Potential Lexifier Languages
A lexical comparison of South African Sign Language and potential lexifier languages by Andries van Niekerk Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters in General Linguistics at the University of Stellenbosch Supervisors: Dr Kate Huddlestone & Prof Anne Baker Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Department of General Linguistics March, 2020 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za DECLARATION By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. Andries van Niekerk March 2020 Copyright © 2020 University of Stellenbosch All rights reserved 1 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za ABSTRACT South Africa’s history of segregation was a large contributing factor for lexical variation in South African Sign Language (SASL) to come about. Foreign sign languages certainly had a presence in the history of deaf education; however, the degree of influence foreign sign languages has on SASL today is what this study has aimed to determine. There have been very limited studies on the presence of loan signs in SASL and none have included extensive variation. This study investigates signs from 20 different schools for the deaf and compares them with signs from six other sign languages and the Paget Gorman Sign System (PGSS). A list of lemmas was created that included the commonly used list of lemmas from Woodward (2003). -
Proceedings 2014
Proceedings 2014 Selected Papers from the Eighteenth College-Wide Conference for Students in Languages, Linguistics & Literature University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa edited by Priscila Leal & Gordon West published by 2015 College of Languages, Linguistics & Literature, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Some rights reserved. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Past proceedings in this series are archived in http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/9195 ! ! ! ! CONTENTS PREFACE iii PLENARY HIGHLIGHTS v I. LITERATURE LĀHUI AND FAMILY IN THE NATION-BUILDING PROJECTS OF WRITTEN IN 3 THE SKY AND LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE Kelsey Amos, Department of English OKAMOTO KANOKO AND EXEMPLARY MOTHERHOOD: CONTEMPORARY 8 READINGS OF BOSHI JOJŌ Francesca Balquin Pizarro, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures WHAT A LITERARY COLLAGE TELLS US: HEMINGWAY’S IN OUR TIME AND 15 “THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO” Madoka Nagado, Department of English DESIRE IN THE LOVE STORIES OF SANYAN 19 Di Sun, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures THE VOICE OF RESISTANCE: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST 26 TRANSCULTURATION IN THE POEMS OF CARLO FRATICELLI, JAMAICA OSORIO, AND ITTAI WONG Ryan Swanson, Department of Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas II. LANGUAGE THE AFFECTIVE EFFECTS OF COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS AFTER 36 EXTENSIVE READING Hyunjung An, Department of Second Language Studies PROPOSAL FOR THE TRANSCRIPTION OF CETACEAN COMMUNICATION 45 Brenda Clark, Department of Linguistics DIFFERENCES IN CO-CONSTRUCTION IN JAPANESE BETWEEN