@inproceedings{thorvaldsdottir:10016:sign-lang:lrec,
  author    = {Thorvaldsdottir, Gudny Bjork},
  title     = {You Get Out What You Put In: The Beginnings of Phonetic and Phonological Coding in the Signs of {Ireland} Digital Corpus},
  pages     = {235--238},
  editor    = {Dreuw, Philippe and Efthimiou, Eleni and Hanke, Thomas and Johnston, Trevor and Mart{\'i}nez Ruiz, Gregorio and Schembri, Adam},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2010} 4th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpora and Sign Language Technologies},
  maintitle = {7th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2010)},
  publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
  address   = {Valletta, Malta},
  day       = {22--23},
  month     = may,
  year      = {2010},
  language  = {english},
  url       = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/10016.html},
  abstract  = {This poster discusses a range of issues with respect to expanding the annotation of the Signs of Ireland (SOI) corpus to incorporate phonetic and phonological coding. This forms part of ongoing PHD research work that explores the phonology-morphology interface in Irish Sign Language (ISL).
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The SOI corpus consists of over 40 narratives that have already been highly annotated: it contains glossed lexical signs, classifier constructions and non-manual features. Classifier handshapes have also been annotated. It is my intention to identify the phonemes and the allophones of ISL using the corpus and it is thus neccessary to incorporate a detailed annotation at the phonetic level.
\par
In order to achieve this, a list of phonetic features for ISL must be identified. To date no research has been done in this area apart from basic work describing handshapes in ISL. Thus far, there is no agreement on the phonetic alphabet inventory for ISL: {\'O}'Baoill and Matthews (2000) identified 66 handshapes while Matthews (2005) identified 78. The issue of allophonic variation has not yet been tackled for this language. 
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For annotation purposes, challenges arise in terms of how handshapes are recorded: for example, of the 66 handshapes identified in {\'O}'Baoill and Matthews (2000), 28 are established as occurring as classifier handshapes also. These are annotated following ECHO project annotation norms (Nonhebel et al. 2004) where possible, with additional handshapes drawn from a list of 48 classifier handshapes described for BSL in Brennan (1992) using names like CL-B, CL-ISL-K etc. within the framework of the SOI corpus. 
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The other parameters that have traditionally been used to describe signs (i.e. location, movement and orientation) have not been researched in ISL at phonological or morphological level. All that currently exists is a vaguely phonetic level description of parameters respect to research on American Sign Languge (ASL) (See O'Baoill and Matthews 2000; Matthews 2005). 
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This poster outlines how, by drawing on Crasborn's (2001) and van der Kooij's (2002) work on Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN), a list of phonetic features have been established for ISL and the changes to the original list of features that were required in order to accommodate ISL.
\par
I also outline the factors influencing decisions regarding the coding and naming of handshapes at phonetic level. These include the question of whether already established naming conventions be maintained. For example, moving away from established protocols will result in inconsistencies within the annotations in the corpus. However, for the purposes of phonetic research a more elaborate coding might be necessary. Another challenge involves establishing what types of tiers are needed to accommodate the proposed research as well as future research at the phonetic and phonological level.}
}

@inproceedings{leeson:08004:sign-lang:lrec,
  author    = {Leeson, Lorraine and Nolan, Brian},
  title     = {Digital Deployment of the Signs of {Ireland} Corpus in Elearning},
  pages     = {112--122},
  editor    = {Crasborn, Onno and Efthimiou, Eleni and Hanke, Thomas and Thoutenhoofd, Ernst D. and Zwitserlood, Inge},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2008} 3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Construction and Exploitation of Sign Language Corpora},
  maintitle = {6th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2008)},
  publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
  address   = {Marrakech, Morocco},
  day       = {1},
  month     = jun,
  year      = {2008},
  language  = {english},
  url       = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/08004.html},
  abstract  = {The Signs of Ireland corpus is part of the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences' ``Languages of Ireland'' project. The first of its kind in Ireland, it comprises 40 male and female signers from across the Republic of Ireland, aged 18-65+, all of whom were educated in a school for the Deaf. The object was to create a snapshot of how ISL is used by `real' signers across geographic, gendered and generational boundaries, all of which have been indicated as sociolinguistically relevant for ISL (cf. the work of Le Master; also see Leeson and Grehan 2004, Leonard 2005, Leeson et al. 2006). With the aim of maximising the potential of cross-linguistic comparability, we mirrored aspects of data collection on other corpora collected to date. Thus, we include the Volterra et al. picture elicitation task (1984), ``The Frog Story'', and also asked informants to tell a self-selected story from their own life. To date, all of the self-selected stories have been annotated using ELAN.
\par
Two institutions (CDS, TCD and ITB) have partnered to create a unique elearning environment based on MOODLE as the learning management system. This delivers third level signed language programmes to a student constituency in a way that resolves problems of time, geography and access, maximizing multi-functional uses of the corpus across programmes. Students can take courseware synchronously and asynchronously. We have now built a considerable digital asset and plan to re-architect our framework to avail of current best practice in digital repositories and digital learning objects vis-{\`a}-vis Irish Sign Language.
\par
This paper outlines the establishment and annotation of the corpus, and the success of the corpus to date in supporting curricula and research. This paper focuses on moving the corpus forward as an asset to develop digital teaching objects. This paper outlines the challenges inherent in this process, and outlines our plans and our progress to date in meeting these objectives. Specific issues include:\begin{itemize}\item Decisions regarding annotation\item Establishing mark-up standards\item Use of the Signs of Ireland corpus in elearning/ blended learning contexts\item Leveraging a corpus within digital learning objects\item Architecture of a digital repository to support sign language learning\item Tagging of learning objects versus language objects\item Issues of assessment in an elearning context\end{itemize}
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References
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Lorraine Leeson, John Saeed, Cormac Leonard, Alison Macduff and Deirdre Byrne-Dunne 2006: Moving Heads and Moving Hands: Developing a Digital Corpus of Irish Sign Language: The `Signs of Ireland' Corpus Development Project. Paper presented at the IT{\&}T conference, Carlow, 2006.
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Leeson, L. and C. Grehan 2004: To the Lexicon and Beyond: The Effect of Gender on Variation in Irish Sign Language. In M. Van Herreweghe and M. Vermeerbergen (eds.): To The Lexicon and Beyond: The Sociolinguistics of European Sign Languages. Gallaudet University Press. 39-73.
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Le Master, B. 1990: The Maintenance and Loss of Female and Male Signs in the Dublin Deaf Community. PhD Dissertation. Los Angeles: University of California.
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Le Master,B. 2002: What Difference Does Difference Make? Negotiating Gender and Generation in Irish Sign Language. In S. Benor, M. Rose, D. Sharma and Q. Shang (eds.): Gendered Practices in Language. Centre for the Study of Languages and Information Publication. Stanford.
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Leonard, C. 2005: Signs of Diversity: Use and Recognition of Gendered Signs among Young Irish Deaf People. Deaf Worlds, Vol. 21 (2) 62-77.
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Volterra, V., S. Laudanna, E. Corazza and F. Natale 1984: Italian Sign Language: The Order of Elements in the Declarative Sentence. In F. Lonke (ed.) Recent Research on European Sign Languages. Svets and Zeitlinger: Lisse. 19- 48.}
}