Progetto e-LIS@ is the presentation of a work-in- progress, which was started in November 2000 by two Italian scholars, Paola Laterza (who is a hearing psychologist) and Claudio Baj, a Deaf LIS teacher. Their aim is to find a system of cataloguing signs in order to create a complete but flexible multimedial dictionary, to be used both by competent Italian Sign Language users and by competent users of Italian. This research presents a new way of ordering signs, different from the usual alphabetical one, and is more congenial to the signing community's linguistic needs, which are clearly oriented to the visual-corporeal channel rather than to the written- oral one. In fact, there are Italian/Sign Language dictionaries based on the alphabetical order, but there is none that goes from Sign Language to the written-oral language (Italian). Special attention has been paid to how signs are systematised: so far the handshape parameter has been explored in detail, but in the near future we plan to associate it with two more parameters, viz. location and orientation. At a later date movement and non-manual signals will also be included among the cataloguing criteria. The objective is not only to put signs in order according to a more flexible and therefore acceptable system for signers (like the alphabetical order satisfies hearing people's phonological needs), but also to allow for the quick search of signs in the multimedial dictionary. The paper describes how, after elaborating different versions in their step-by-step research, the two researchers decided that the present format was more functional, practical and economical from the point of view of the dictionary as an instrument. They will present the results already obtained in their research as well as their intermediate findings to demonstrate their chosen work method but also to receive feedback from other Italian and European realities.
@inproceedings{laterza:04024:sign-lang:lrec,
author = {Laterza, Paola and Baj, Claudio},
title = {Progetto {e-LIS@}},
pages = {113--125},
editor = {Streiter, Oliver and Vettori, Chiara},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2004} Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: From {SignWriting} to Image Processing. Information techniques and their implications for teaching, documentation and communication},
maintitle = {4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2004)},
publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
address = {Lisbon, Portugal},
day = {30},
month = may,
year = {2004},
language = {english},
url = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/04024.pdf}
}