Two-Handed Signs and Handedness: Phonological Implications for Sign Language Structure

Lepp, Lisa; De Sisto, Mirella; Shterionov, Dimitar

Two-Handed Signs and Handedness: Phonological Implications for Sign Language Structure

Lepp, Lisa | De Sisto, Mirella | Shterionov, Dimitar

Volume:: Proceedings of the LREC2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion
Venue:: Palma, Mallorca, Spain
Date:: 16 May 2026
Pages:: 275–286
Publisher:: European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Licence:: CC BY-NC 4.0
sign-lang ID:: 26032
ISBN:: 978-2-493814-82-1

Abstract

Handedness —the use of one versus two hands in sign production— has traditionally been discussed in relation to dominance and symmetry conditions, yet it remains underrepresented in formal phonological models of sign languages. This paper argues that handedness constitutes a core phonological parameter that directly influences the structure and interaction of movement, handshape, location, and orientation. Building on hierarchical and dependency-based approaches, we propose an adapted phonological dependency model that explicitly integrates handedness in the representation of manual articulators. In one-handed signs, features are specified for a single active hand. In two-handed signs, feature distribution is constrained by symmetry and dominance conditions, which regulate whether the hands must share features or may differ in a structurally restricted way. This structural encoding accounts for variation phenomena such as weak add, weak prop, and weak drop as constrained adjustments within the phonological system. From a technical perspective, this refinement suggests more formal restrictiveness and empirical discriminability within the feature geometries, reduced representational ambiguity, and improved empirical testability across theoretical, corpus-based, and computational implementations, strengthening the interface between phonological theory and sign language technology.

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Citation in ACL Citation Format

Lisa Lepp, Mirella De Sisto, Dimitar Shterionov. 2026. Two-Handed Signs and Handedness: Phonological Implications for Sign Language Structure. In Proceedings of the LREC2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion, pages 275–286, Palma, Mallorca, Spain. European Language Resources Association (ELRA).

BibTeX Export

@inproceedings{lepp:26032:sign-lang:lrec,
  author    = {Lepp, Lisa and De Sisto, Mirella and Shterionov, Dimitar},
  title     = {Two-Handed Signs and Handedness: Phonological Implications for Sign Language Structure},
  pages     = {275--286},
  editor    = {Efthimiou, Eleni and Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and Hanke, Thomas and Hochgesang, Julie A. and Mesch, Johanna and Schulder, Marc},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the {LREC2026} 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion},
  maintitle = {15th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation ({LREC} 2026)},
  publisher = {{European Language Resources Association (ELRA)}},
  address   = {Palma, Mallorca, Spain},
  day       = {16},
  month     = may,
  year      = {2026},
  isbn      = {978-2-493814-82-1},
  language  = {english},
  url       = {https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/26032.html}
}