Visualizing Lects in a Sign Language Corpus: Mining Lexical Variation Data in Lects of Swedish Sign Language

Börstell, Carl | Östling, Robert

Volume:: Proceedings of the LREC2016 7th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining
Venue:: Portorož, Slovenia
Date:: 28 May 2016
Pages:: 13–18
Publisher:: European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
License:: CC BY-NC 4.0
sign-lang ID:: 16004

Content Categories

Languages:: Swedish Sign Language
Corpora:: STS-korpus

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the possibilities for mining lexical variation data across (potential) lects in Swedish Sign Language (SSL). The data come from the SSL Corpus (SSLC), a continuously expanding corpus of SSL, its latest release containing 43307 annotated sign tokens, distributed over 42 signers and 75 time-aligned video and annotation files. After extracting the raw data from the SSLC annotation files, we created a database for investigating lexical distribution/variation across three possible lects, by merging the raw data with an external metadata file, containing information about the age, gender, and regional background of each of the 42 signers in the corpus. We go on to present a first version of an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) that can be used as a tool for investigating lexical variation across different lects, and demonstrate a few interesting finds. This tool makes it easier for researchers and non-researchers alike to have the corpus frequencies for individual signs visualized in an instant, and the tool can easily be updated with future expansions of the SSLC.

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Citation in ACL Citation Format

Carl Börstell, Robert Östling. 2016. Visualizing Lects in a Sign Language Corpus: Mining Lexical Variation Data in Lects of Swedish Sign Language. In Proceedings of the LREC2016 7th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining, pages 13–18, Portorož, Slovenia. European Language Resources Association (ELRA).

BibTeX Export

@inproceedings{borstell:16004:sign-lang:lrec,
  author    = {B{\"o}rstell, Carl and {\"O}stling, Robert},
  title     = {Visualizing Lects in a Sign Language Corpus: Mining Lexical Variation Data in Lects of {Swedish} {Sign} {Language}},
  pages     = {13--18},
  editor    = {Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Kristoffersen, Jette and Mesch, Johanna},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2016} 7th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining},
  maintitle = {10th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2016)},
  publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
  address   = {Portoro{\v z}, Slovenia},
  day       = {28},
  month     = may,
  year      = {2016},
  language  = {english},
  url       = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/16004.pdf}
}