SignTyp: Crosslinguistic sign language database available online

[Rachel Channon]

The SignTyp project is pleased to announce that a new version of the SignTyp
database is now available at the Linguistics Data Consortium web site, at
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/signtyp/downloads/

A zipped file contains both database and documentation. It is free to all
researchers for non-commercial purposes.  SignTyp is supported by grant
BCS0544944 from the National Science Foundation to Drs. Harry van der Hulst
and Rachel Channon at the University of Connecticut.

 

SignTyp is a prototype of a crosslinguistic database containing
phonetic-phonological encoding of signs in a variety of sign languages,
using datasets that had already been coded by various researchers. Setting a
goal comparable to, for example, CHILDES (MacWhinney 2000), SignTyp provides
a home for existing datasets from different linguists. A uniform coding
system has been developed which translates the varying coding systems. The
primary focus of this system is to notate form properties of sign that are
potentially distinctive or phonological, so that researchers can analyze
these potentially distinctive values, and determine which elements are
actually non-distinctive or phonetic and which are truly phonological.
Multiple languages also allow the determination of which characteristics are
cross-linguistically distinctive.  

 

The database currently includes almost 12,000 signs in nine different
language sets, for six different sign languages, from four annotating groups
or individuals: ASL (3 different time periods), Sign Language of the
Netherlands, Korean Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, New Zealand Sign
Language, and Finnish Sign language (two different time periods). We would
like to thank the individuals who provided us with these datasets: Daisuke
Hara, Lorna Rozelle and the SignPhon group (Harry van der Hulst, Onno
Crasborn, Els van der Kooij, Marja Blees and others - see Crasborn, van der
Hulst and van der Kooij 2001).  The Hara and Rozelle data were the datasets
they used in their dissertations (Hara 2003 and Rozelle 2003), and the
SignPhon data was used for dissertations by Crasborn (2001) and van der
Kooij (2002).  Rachel Channon provided the final ASL dataset based on the
Long (1918) ASL dictionary. The sign sets vary in what has been coded, with
some sets including more information than others.  

 

References

Crasborn, Onno, Harry van der Hulst and Els van der Kooij. 2001. SignPhon: A
phonological database for sign languages. Sign Language and Linguistics 4:
1/2, pp. 215-228.

Crasborn, Onno. 2001. Phonetic Implementation of Phonological Categories in
Sign Language of the Netherlands. Doctoral dissertation, Leiden University,
The Netherlands.

Hara, Daisuke. 2003. A Complexity-Based Approach to the Syllable Formation
in Sign Language. Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago.

Long, J. Schuyler. 1918. The Sign Language: A Manual of Signs. Washington
DC: Gallaudet College.

MacWhinney, Brian. 2000. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk.
Third Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Rozelle, Lorna. 2003. The Structure of Sign Language Lexicons: Inventory and
Distribution of Handshape and Location. Doctoral dissertation, University of
Washington.

van der Hulst, Harry and Rachel Channon. 2008. Annual Report to the National
Science Foundation for grant 0544944.

van der Kooij, Els. 2002. Phonological Categories in Sign Language of the
Netherlands: The Role of Phonetic Implementation and Iconicity. Doctoral
dissertation, Leiden University, The Netherlands.

 

 

Rachel Channon

University of Connecticut

Department of Linguistics, Unit 1145

337 Mansfield Road

Storrs, CT 06269-1145

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