In this paper, we present evidence from a case study in LSF, conducted on narratives from 6 adult signers. In this study, picture and video stimuli have been used in order to identify the role of non-manual features such as gaze, facial expressions and mouth features. We discuss the importance of mouth features as markers of the alternation between frozen (Lexical Units, LU) and productive signs (Highly Iconic Structures, HIS). Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis, we propose to consider mouth features, i.e. mouthings on the one hand, and mouth gestures on the other hand, as markers, respectively, of Lexical Units versus Highly Iconic Structures. As such, we propose to consider mouthings and mouth gestures as fundamental cues for determining the nature, role and interpretation of manual signs, in conjunction with other non-manual features (facial expression). We propose an ELAN annotation template for mouth features in SLs, and a discussion on the different mouth features and their respective roles as discourse and syntactic-semantic operators.
@inproceedings{balvet:14030:sign-lang:lrec,
author = {Balvet, Antonio and Sallandre, Marie-Anne},
title = {Mouth features as non-manual cues for the categorization of lexical and productive signs in {French} {Sign} {Language} ({LSF})},
pages = {1--6},
editor = {Crasborn, Onno and Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas 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/14030.pdf}
}