In this article, we report on a study conducted to further the design a formal grammar model (AZee), confronting it to the traditional notion of syntax along the way. The model was initiated to work as an unambiguous linguistic input for signing avatars, accounting for all simultaneous articulators while doing away with the generally assumed and separate levels of lexicon, syntax, etc. Specifically, the work presented here focused on juxtaposition in signed streams (a fundamental feature of syntax), which we propose to consider as a mere form feature, and use it as the starting point of data-driven searches for grammatical rules. The result is a tremendous progress in coverage of LSF grammar, and fairly strong evidence that our initial goal is attainable. We give concrete examples of rules, and a clear illustration of the recursive mechanics of the grammar producing LSF forms, and conclude with theoretical remarks on the AZee paradigm in terms of syntax, word/sign order and the like.
@inproceedings{filhol:16027:sign-lang:lrec,
author = {Filhol, Michael and Hadjadj, Mohamed Nassime},
title = {Juxtaposition as a Form Feature - Syntax Captured and Explained rather than Assumed and Modelled},
pages = {69--74},
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/16027.pdf}
}
| Hadjadj, Mohamed Nassime