The Danish Sign Language Ditionary - a breif description

[Jette Kristoffersen]

The editorial staff of the Danish Sign Language Dictionary would like to
fullfill the wishes from a number of fellow lexicographers by giving -
in english -  a brief overvue of the content and the lexical design of
our dictionary:


The dictionary is (as of May 2008) freely accessible at:
www.tegnsprog.dk

The dictionary was developed and edited at the Centre for Sign Language
and Sign Supported Communication - KC  in close corporation with the
Danish Deaf Association (DDL). 

The editorial staff can be contacted through: info at tegnsprog.dk


Main features

The entries
The sign lemmas are represented through:
*	A video clip of the base form (and potentially of one or more
variants).
*	A photo.
*	A unique gloss, which represents the sign throughout the
dictionary, regardless of its actual meaning in a given context.
*	Drawings of the first location and handshape occurring in the
description of the sign's manual features.

Clickable entry-level cross-references are given to:
*	homonyms
*	examples of lexicalised classifier verbs (referred to from
classifier entries)

Polysemous signs are subdivided into separate meanings. Meanings with a
semantically opaque relation to the basic meaning of the sign, are
considered homonyms, and established as separate entries. 

Common sign compounds, which meaning cannot be deducted as the sum of
the meanings of the signs comprised in the compound, are described as
separate meanings.

Each meaning is described through one or more Danish equivalents.
Equivalents that can be used as mouthing for the sign in the particular
meaning are marked with a special mouth symbol.

If no appropriate equivalent can be given, or if the equivalents do not
fully cover the meaning of the sign, a prose description of the sign's
use or function is provided. 

Non-Danish mouth movements that often co-occur with the sign in a
particular meaning are listed below the equivalents. 

Clickable meaning-level cross-references are given to:
*	synonyms
*	short forms / long forms
*	related number incorporations
*	signs with a similar Danish equivalent, but a different meaning
(the equivalent is homonymous or strongly polysemous).

A meaning can be accompanied by information about special restrictions
in its use.

For the majority of meanings one or more usage example is provided.
The examples are rendered as video clips accompanied by glosses and
Danish translations.
Both glosses and translations are searchable through text search.
All glosses that match dictionary entries are clickable (link to the
appropriate entries).
Most of the usage examples are elicited from video recordings of a group
of Sign Language consultants (all native signers) affiliated to the
dictionary project.
 
Search facilities
The signs can be looked up through:
*	Handshape (with a possibility of specifying particular
handshapes for the active and the passive hand).
*	Location
*	Text, including phrase search ("...") and wildcard search (* and
?).
*	Topic
*	Combinations of the above.

Handshapes to be used in the search criteria are selected in groups of
related handshapes. However, selected handshapes can be deselected
individually, which gives the user the opportunity to select single
handshapes or custom groups of handshapes, independently of the default
handshape grouping.

The search result is by default ordered by relevance:
Handshape and location matches are ordered according to their appearance
in the sign.
Text search matches are weighted in the following order: glosses,
equivalents, glosses in usage examples, words in translations of usage
examples.
Matches with equal relevance are ordered first by location, then by
handshape.
Furthermore, the user can choose to sort the entire search result either
by location or handshape.
 



Approximate key figures

2.000 sign entries.
Due to limited resources and a strict project time frame, the first
edition of the dictionary describes only the basic vocabulary of Danish
Sign Language.
Among the entries are special entries for the following common "building
blocks" of Danish Sign Language:
*	Classifiers (49 entries)
*	The manual alphabet (29 entries)
*	The Mouth-Hand-System (14 entries)
*	Affixes (6 entries)

500 variants.
The variants are shown as secondary video clips under the base form
entries. All recorded variants are included in searches on manual
features.

75 entry-level cross-references.

3.000 meanings.

6.000 Danish equivalents.

150 prose descriptions of special use or function.

2.500 meaning-level cross-references.

3.500 usage examples.
The examples contain about:
*	3.400 glosses (27.500 running glosses)
*	7.000 words in the translations (44.500 running words) 


And thank you for all the mails we have recieved from you after the
dictionary went online.

Jette Kristoffersen
Project leader


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