Final announcement: Workshop on sign language corpora

[Gaurav Mathur]

We are pleased to announce a workshop titled _Building sign language corpora in North 
America_.

Purpose of workshop: There are many definitions of a language corpus. One such 
definition offered by McEnery, Xiao and Tono (2006) is a collection of texts in a given 
language that is representative, comprehensive, accessible, machine-readable and 
searchable. There are several ongoing language corpora projects focused on the 
documentation of sign languages in countries like Australia, The Netherlands, the United 
Kingdom and Germany. To date, there have been several workshops in Europe on various 
aspects of building a sign language corpus (e.g., the SLCN series of workshops co-
organized by Onno Crasborn and colleagues). This workshop will provide a much needed 
opportunity for researchers based in the US and Canada to share experiences from their 
work in this area, as well as share ideas for future projects.

Program information: The workshop will begin on Saturday, May 21, 2011, at 8:30 am 
and take place at Gallaudet University, in the Student Academic Center (SAC), Room 
1011. The complete list of presenters is as follows:

• Ted Supalla (University of Rochester)

• Christian Rathmann (University of Hamburg)

• Trevor Johnston (Macquarie University), Adam Schembri (La Trobe University), Kearsy 
Cormier, Jordan Fenlon, and Ramas Rentelis (University College London)
“Type-token matching in annotated SL corpora: Examples from the Auslan and BSL corpus 
projects”

• Rosalee Wolfe, John C. McDonald, and Jerry Schnepp (DePaul University)
“Synthetic and acquired corpora: meeting at the annotation”

• Ronnie B. Wilbur, Kadir Gokgoz and Robin Shay (Purdue University), Aleix Martinez 
(Ohio State University)
“Mechanics and Issues in Making ASL Databases Available”

• Carol Neidle (Boston University)

• Kearsy Cormier, Jordan Fenlon and Ramas Rentelis (University College London), Adam 
Schembri (La Trobe University), Trevor Johnston (Macquarie University)
“Multiple access levels and multiple interfaces of the BSL and Auslan Corpora”

• Jonathan Keane (University of Chicago), Susan Rizzo (University of Chicago), Diane 
Brentari (Purdue University), and Jason Riggle (University of Chicago)
“Phonetic coding of fingerspelling”

• Adam Frost (Gallaudet University)
“Sign Language Corpus using SignWriting”

• Diane Lillo-Martin, University of Connecticut

In addition, on Sunday, May 22, 2011, from 9 am to noon, there will be an ELAN training 
session by Julie Hochgesang for those who are interested.

Conference languages: We welcome presentations in ASL or International Sign (IS), and 
will provide ASL/English and ASL/IS interpretation.

Registration information: Registration is free but required and due by May 16, 2011. To 
register, please send an email to sign.corpus.workshop at gmail.com with the following 
information:

(i) your name
(ii) your affiliation
(iii) your email address
(iv) whether you wish to participate in the ELAN training on Sunday

There is a fee of $10 for lunch on Saturday – please bring this in cash with you to the 
workshop.

Lodging information: A block of rooms has been reserved at the Hilton Garden Inn, which 
is located next to the New York Avenue/Gallaudet metro station on the Red Line and 
about 8-10 minutes walking distance from the workshop venue. For workshop 
participants, the hotel is offering a discounted rate of $129/night plus 14.5% taxes. The 
discounted rate is good until May 13, 2011. To make reservations, please call the toll-free 
number 1-800-HILTONS or the hotel directly at 202-408-4870 and identify yourself as a 
member of the Corpus Workshop group when making the reservation. Alternatively, you 
may book online at the following link and use the booking code CORPU. 

http://hiltongardeninn.hilton.com/en/gi/hotels/index.jhtml?ctyhocn=DCANMGI

Co-organizers:
Julie Hochgesang, Gene Mirus, and Gaurav Mathur (Gallaudet University)