@inproceedings{kopf:26030:sign-lang:lrec, author = {Kopf, Maria and Konrad, Reiner and Langer, Gabriele and Schulder, Marc and K{\"o}nig, Lutz}, title = {Exploring Aspects of Spontaneous Signing in the {DGS} {Corpus}}, pages = {262--274}, editor = {Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Mesch, Johanna and Schulder, Marc}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2026} 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion}, maintitle = {15th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2026)}, publisher = {{ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)}}, address = {Palma, Mallorca, Spain}, day = {16}, month = may, year = {2026}, isbn = {978-2-493814-82-1}, language = {english}, url = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/26030.html}, doi = {10.63317/5bd5xeb3kh7u}, abstract = {Most use of sign language is spontaneous, unplanned, embedded in a one-to-one situation and transient. General sign language corpora aim at such naturalistic data. Thus it can be expected that they include phenomena of spontaneous language similar to the ones described for spontaneous speech in vocal languages: that is, (dis)fluencies such as pauses, hesitations, errors, false starts and repairs as well as discourse markers. In this paper we explore which of the known phenomena of spontaneous language from previous research on vocal and sign languages could be identified in the DGS Corpus using the annotations at hand. We describe our search strategies, consider additional annotation tiers for spontaneous language, and provide examples for the phenomena identified.} } @inproceedings{konrad:24050:sign-lang:lrec, author = {Konrad, Reiner and Hanke, Thomas and Isard, Amy and Schulder, Marc and K{\"o}nig, Lutz and Bleicken, Julian and B{\"o}se, Oliver}, title = {Corpus {\`a} la carte -- Improving Access to the {Public} {DGS} {Corpus}}, pages = {184--193}, editor = {Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Mesch, Johanna and Schulder, Marc}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC-COLING} 2024 11th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Evaluation of Sign Language Resources}, maintitle = {2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC-COLING} 2024)}, publisher = {{ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA) and the International Committee on Computational Linguistics (ICCL)}}, address = {Torino, Italy}, day = {25}, month = may, year = {2024}, isbn = {978-2-493814-30-2}, language = {english}, url = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/24050.html}, doi = {10.63317/2owwcdi3rvu5}, abstract = {This article presents the fourth release of the Public DGS Corpus, a large corpus of German Sign Language (DGS). Since its first release in 2018, the Public DGS Corpus has provided its content through multiple portals to meet the needs of different user groups. Having started with a community portal and a research portal for general data access, the ANNIS portal for dynamic web-based exploration of the corpus was added in 2022. With this latest release, a fourth portal is added to allow sign language linguists to access the public corpus directly through the annotation software iLex. Furthermore, search capabilities and interconnectedness between the portals are strongly improved, allowing users to move between portals to combine their strengths. Additional improvements to the corpus include additional recordings, new pose information models, improved HamNoSys, enhanced type information and web interface revisions.} } @inproceedings{hanke:20030:sign-lang:lrec, author = {Hanke, Thomas and Jahn, Elena and W{\"a}hl, Sabrina and B{\"o}se, Oliver and K{\"o}nig, Lutz}, title = {{SignHunter} -- A Sign Elicitation Tool Suitable for Deaf Events}, pages = {83--88}, editor = {Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Kristoffersen, Jette and Mesch, Johanna}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2020} 9th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Sign Language Resources in the Service of the Language Community, Technological Challenges and Application Perspectives}, maintitle = {12th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2020)}, publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}}, address = {Marseille, France}, day = {16}, month = may, year = {2020}, isbn = {979-10-95546-54-2}, language = {english}, url = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/20030.html}, doi = {10.63317/2s9zd465t94t}, abstract = {This paper presents SignHunter, a tool for collecting isolated signs, and discusses application possibilities. SignHunter is successfully used within the DGS-Korpus project to collect name signs for places and cities. The data adds to the content of a German Sign Language (DGS) -- German dictionary which is currently being developed, as well as a freely accessible subset of the DGS Corpus, the Public DGS Corpus. We discuss reasons to complement a natural language corpus by eliciting concepts without context and present an application example of SignHunter.} } @inproceedings{hanke:10047:sign-lang:lrec, author = {Hanke, Thomas and K{\"o}nig, Lutz and Wagner, Sven and Matthes, Silke}, title = {{DGS} {Corpus} {\&} {Dicta-Sign}: The {Hamburg} Studio Setup}, pages = {106--109}, 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/10047.html}, abstract = {Not taking into account budget restrictions, the setup of a sign language studio always is a balancing act between high quality recordings on the one hand not to make the transcription process even more complicated than it is anyway and possibly to enable automatic processing of the recordings, and on the other hand an environment where the informants still feel comfortable enough so that the recording situation does not have too much impact on the signing. In the case of the DGS Corpus project, an additional constraint is that the studio is to be relocated twelve times over the course of two years as it was decided to make the recordings in the regions instead of inviting participants to one central place to avoid dialectal mixing. One of the implications of this approach is that the studio is operated by non-specialist deaf fieldworkers with limited time available for training. \par Basically all tasks in the project involve two informants interacting in different ways with each other. A moderator (the fieldworker from the region) introduces the tasks and observes the conversation, but only interferes with the conversation if absolutely necessary. \par The camera setup we finally ended up with consists of seven cameras altogether, three on each informant and one for the whole scene including the moderator. Two HD cameras on the informant provide frontal and birds-eye views while a stereo camera mounted on top of the frontal-view camera provides footage that helps automatic processing. The seventh camera is an HD camera as well. \par In contrary to setups in earlier projects, we invite the two informants to sit down directly facing each other, with the frontal-view camera positioned above (and behind) the head of the other informant. Pre-tests revealed that with a distance of approximately three meters, the distorsion introduced by the elevated position of the camera does not negatively affect the transcription from video. Instead, this setting provides a front view of the informant similar to the addressee's, allowing to identify body shifts as well as direction of eye gaze more easily. At the same time, this constellation avoids informants targeting their signing back and forth between the addressee and the camera. \par Elicitation material and instructions are presented to the informants on screens located on the floor between them. A custom software, ``Session Director'' allows the moderator to present slides to the informants by the click of a button, and to keep track of the time elapsed for each individual task as well as the whole session. Using pre-recorded instructions and elicitation materials not only reduces the burdens on the moderator, but also makes sure that all informants get exactly the same input. \par Session Director keeps a log of all actions started by the moderator, allowing us to exactly reconstruct what task has been worked on when. This log is easily converted into tagging in our transcription environment, iLex. This not only allows automatic segmentation of tasks and pauses, but also introduces links from the transcript to the task and vice versa. \par Task descriptions for Session Director are kept as XML files, making it easy to use this freely available tool for other projects as well.} } @inproceedings{konig:08017:sign-lang:lrec, author = {K{\"o}nig, Lutz and K{\"o}nig, Susanne and Konrad, Reiner and Langer, Gabriele}, title = {Corpus-based Sign Dictionaries of Technical Terms -- Dictionary Projects at the {IDGS} in {Hamburg}}, pages = {94--100}, 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/08017.html}, abstract = {At the Institute of German Sign Language (IDGS), six dictionary projects in such diverse technical fields as computer technology, psychology, joinery, domestic science, social work as well as health and nursing care have been carried out. A seventh project on landscaping and horticulture is in progress. Six of the seven dictionaries are based on a corpus collected from deaf experts in the respective fields. Elicitation methods, such as interviews and picture prompts, corpus design as well as annotation, transcription, sign analysis and dictionary production have been continually developed and refined over the years. Many procedures rely heavily on the use of a relational database system iLex (see other presentation). \par The presentation provides an overview of the projects, procedures and products with special attention given to the issues of corpus-building for and corpus-relatedness of the dictionaries at most stages of analysis and production. We focus on the corpus-based selection process which translations to include in the dictionary and on the analysis of single signs. \par From 1998 on, the dictionaries do not only provide translations of technical terms into DGS but also include a special section that lists single signs used in these translations in separate entries. The structure of these entries is similar to what you would expect from a general sign language dictionary. Information including lexical status, meaning, use of space, iconic value and cross references to similar signs is given for each sign. However, due to the limited size of each of these corpora and the elicitation methods used, not all information can be drawn from or validated by the corpus. \par Within the scope of the projects, assumptions and practical decisions have been made to deal with lexicological and lexicographical issues. These include the identification of lexemes, the degree of lexicalisation, i.e. the lexical status of signs and their meanings, the role of mouthings, and the relations between signs (polysemes vs. homonyms, modifications and variants). One important criterion for these decisions is the iconic value of signs. \par The lexicographic solutions applied to specialised sign language dictionaries also provide a solid basis for general sign lexicography as well as corpus annotation and lexical analysis.} }