Within the framework of the Dicta-Sign project, parallelised sign language corpora are being compiled for four European sign languages (BSL, DGS, GSL, and LSF). The aim for the data collection was to achieve as high a level of naturalness as can be achieved with semi-spontaneous utterances under lab conditions. Therefore, informants were filmed in pairs interacting with each other. With respect to parallelisability, elicitation tasks had to be designed that result in semantically close answers without predetermining the choice of vocabulary and grammar. The domain selected for Dicta-Sign is ‘Travel across Europe’. The tasks developed within the project cover different interaction formats ranging from monologues to sequences of very short turns, also with different levels of predictability. They include communication for transport by different means and contexts as well as related personal experiences. The elicitation materials are of different media formats and at various levels of complexity. They comprise of town and transportation network maps, pictures displaying a variety of places, items and situations linked to the target domain, as well as stories presented in sign language or as a picture story. In each session ten different tasks are to be performed, each of them planned to have a duration of about five to ten minutes, thereby switching roles between the informants several times during a recording session. Taking into account cultural differences as well as language dependent issues regarding the different countries in the project, the material was designed in a way that only minor adjustments are needed that do not change the character of a task. The elicitation tasks and materials developed within the project as well as experiences gained adjusting and using the material for Dicta-Sign’s different target languages are illustrated in this paper.
@inproceedings{matthes:10019:sign-lang:lrec,
author = {Matthes, Silke and Hanke, Thomas and Storz, Jakob and Efthimiou, Eleni and Dimou, Athanasia-Lida and Karioris, Panagiotis and Braffort, Annelies and Choisier, Annick and Pelhate, Julia and Safar, Eva},
title = {Elicitation tasks and materials designed for {Dicta-Sign}'s multi-lingual corpus},
pages = {158--163},
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/10019.pdf}
}
| Storz, Jakob | Efthimiou, Eleni