When nonmanuals meet semantics and syntax: Towards a practical guide for the segmentation of sign language discourse

Gabarró-López, Sílvia | Meurant, Laurence

Volume:: Proceedings of the LREC2014 6th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Beyond the Manual Channel
Venue:: Reykjavik, Iceland
Date:: 31 May 2014
Pages:: 55–62
Publisher:: European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
License:: CC BY-NC 4.0
sign-lang ID:: 14018

Content Categories

Languages:: French Belgian Sign Language

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the segmentation of sign language (SL) discourses by providing an operational synthesis of the criteria that signers use to segment a SL discourse. Such procedure was required when it came to analyse the role of buoys as discourse markers (DMs), which is part of a PhD on DMs in French Belgian SL (LSFB). All buoy markers found in the data had to be differentiated in terms of scope: some markers (like most list buoy markers) seemed to be long range markers, whereas others (like most fragment buoy markers) seemed to have a local scope only. Our practical guide results from a hierarchized and operationalized synthesis of the criteria, which explain the segmentation judgments of deaf (native and non-native) and hearing (non-native) signers of LSFB who were asked to segment a small-scale (1h) corpus. These criteria are a combination of non-manual, semantic and syntactic cues. Our contribution aims to be shared, tested on other SLs and hopefully improved to provide SL researchers who conduct discourse studies with some efficient and easy-to-use guidelines, and avoid them extensive (and time-consuming) annotation of the manual and non-manual cues that are related to the marking of boundaries in SLs.

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Citation in ACL Citation Format

Sílvia Gabarró-López, Laurence Meurant. 2014. When nonmanuals meet semantics and syntax: Towards a practical guide for the segmentation of sign language discourse. In Proceedings of the LREC2014 6th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Beyond the Manual Channel, pages 55–62, Reykjavik, Iceland. European Language Resources Association (ELRA).

BibTeX Export

@inproceedings{gabarrolopez:14018:sign-lang:lrec,
  author    = {Gabarr{\'o}-L{\'o}pez, S{\'i}lvia and Meurant, Laurence},
  title     = {When nonmanuals meet semantics and syntax: Towards a practical guide for the segmentation of sign language discourse},
  pages     = {55--62},
  editor    = {Crasborn, Onno and Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Kristoffersen, Jette and Mesch, Johanna},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2014} 6th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Beyond the Manual Channel},
  maintitle = {9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2014)},
  publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
  address   = {Reykjavik, Iceland},
  day       = {31},
  month     = may,
  year      = {2014},
  language  = {english},
  url       = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/14018.pdf}
}