Factors to Consider When Making Lexical Comparisons of Sign Languages: Notes from an Ongoing Comparison of German Sign Language and Swiss German Sign Language

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Ebling ◽  
Reiner Konrad ◽  
Penny Boyes Braem ◽  
Gabriele Langer
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
German Sign Language

scholarly journals Sign language learning and assessment in German Switzerland: Exploring the potential of vocabulary size tests for Swiss German Sign Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-40
Author(s):  
Tobias Haug ◽  
Sarah Ebling ◽  
Penny Boyes Braem ◽  
Katja Tissi ◽  
Sandra Sidler-Miserez
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
German Sign Language

scholarly journals Validity evidence for a sentence repetition test of Swiss German Sign Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 412-434
Author(s):  
Tobias Haug ◽  
Aaron Olaf Batty ◽  
Martin Venetz ◽  
Christa Notter ◽  
Simone Girard-Groeber ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
School Context ◽  
Analysis Of Covariance ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
Cognitive Framework ◽  
Deaf Adults ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
German Sign Language

In this study we seek evidence of validity according to the socio-cognitive framework (Weir, 2005) for a new sentence repetition test (SRT) for young Deaf L1 Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS) users. SRTs have been developed for various purposes for both spoken and sign languages to assess language development in children. In order to address the need for tests to assess the grammatical development of Deaf L1 DSGS users in a school context, we developed an SRT. The test targets young learners aged 6–17 years, and we administered it to 46 Deaf students aged 6.92–17.33 ( M = 11.17) years. In addition to the young learner data, we collected data from Deaf adults ( N = 14) and from a sub-sample of the children ( n = 19) who also took a test of DSGS narrative comprehension, serving as a criterion measure. We analyzed the data with many-facet Rasch modeling, regression analysis, and analysis of covariance. The results show evidence of scoring, criterion, and context validity, suggesting the suitability of the SRT for the intended purpose, and will inform the revision of the test for future use as an instrument to assess the sign language development of Deaf children.

scholarly journals person climbing up a tree

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Pfau ◽  
Markus Steinbach
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Functional Structure ◽  
Functional Domain ◽  
Functional Elements ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Spatial Properties ◽  
Cognitive Theories ◽  
German Sign Language ◽  
Diachronic Changes ◽  
Functional Position

Studies on sign language grammaticalization have demonstrated that most of the attested diachronic changes from lexical to functional elements parallel those previously described for spoken languages. To date, most of these studies are either descriptive in nature or embedded within functional-cognitive theories. In contrast, we take a generative perspective on sign language grammaticalization, adopting ideas by Roberts & Roussou (2003), who suggest that grammaticalization can be characterized as “reanalysis ‘upwards’ along the functional structure”. Following an overview of some of the attested modality-independent pathways, we zoom in on the grammaticalization of two types of agreement auxiliaries, the lexical sources of which are the verb give and the noun person. We argue that the grammaticalization of give-aux (in Greek Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language) follows directly from Roberts & Roussou’s model because a lexical verb is reanalyzed as an element which is merged in a structurally higher functional position (little v). The same is true for person, but this change has an additional modality-specific flavor. In spoken languages, agreement affixes typically enter the functional domain of V via cliticization. In contrast, in German Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language, person, after having been reanalyzed as a determiner-like element, ‘jumps’ directly from D into AgrO — most probably because it has the relevant spatial properties necessary to express agreement. Thus, grammaticalization in sign languages, while being structurally similar, allows for types of reanalysis that are not attested in spoken languages.

A multimedia bilingual database for the lexicon of Swiss German Sign Language

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 133-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Boyes-Braem
Keyword(s):  
German Text ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Multimedia Database ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Base Form ◽  
German Sign Language

This multimedia database project is the first large-scale collection and description of the signs of Swiss German Sign Language (Deutschschweizerische Gebärdensprache, DSGS). The aim of the database is to gather linguistic information on the DSGS lexicon which can serve as a basis for future dictionaries and teaching materials, as well as function as a tool for linguistic research. For each lexical entry, there is information about all of the sign’s meanings, its morphological and syntactic characteristic, several categories of usage (geographical and generation variation, style, register) as well as example links to videotaped signed sentences. The information about each lexical item is represented in the database in several different forms: Video clips of the base form of the sign and of signed sentences in which it appears, line drawings, information checkboxes, form notation (HamNoSys and SignWriting), as well as German text.

scholarly journals Word classes in sign languages

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waldemar Schwager ◽  
Ulrike Zeshan
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Village Community ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
German Sign Language ◽  
Language Literature

The topic of word classes remains curiously under-represented in the sign language literature due to many theoretical and methodological problems in sign linguistics. This article focuses on language-specific classifications of signs into word classes in two different sign languages: German Sign Language and Kata Kolok, the sign language of a village community in Bali. The article discusses semantic and structural criteria for identifying word classes in the target sign languages. On the basis of a data set of signs, these criteria are systematically tested out as a first step towards an inductive classification of signs. Approaches and analyses relating to the problem of word classes in linguistic typology are used for shedding new light on the issue of word class distinctions in sign languages.

Building a parallel corpus of German/Swiss German Sign Language train announcements

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Ebling
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Statistical Machine Translation ◽  
Translation System ◽  
Notation System ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Machine Translation System ◽  
German Sign Language ◽  
Animation System

We present a parallel corpus of German/Swiss German Sign Language train announcements. The corpus is used in a statistical machine translation system that translates from German to Swiss German Sign Language. The output of the translation system is then passed on to an animation system, the result being a sign language avatar representation on a mobile phone. Building the parallel corpus consisted of four steps: translating the written German train announcements into Swiss German Sign Language glosses, signing the announcements in front of a camera on the basis of the gloss transcriptions, notating the signs in the video recordings in a form-based sign language notation system, and adding information about non-manual features. The resulting corpus contains 3,241 sentence pairs, which makes it a large parallel corpus involving sign language.

A multimedia bilingual database for the lexicon of Swiss German Sign Language

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 133-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Boyes-Braem
Keyword(s):  
German Text ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Multimedia Database ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Base Form ◽  
German Sign Language

This multimedia database project is the first large-scale collection and description of the signs of Swiss German Sign Language (Deutschschweizerische Gebärdensprache, DSGS). The aim of the database is to gather linguistic information on the DSGS lexicon which can serve as a basis for future dictionaries and teaching materials, as well as function as a tool for linguistic research. For each lexical entry, there is information about all of the sign’s meanings, its morphological and syntactic characteristic, several categories of usage (geographical and generation variation, style, register) as well as example links to videotaped signed sentences. The information about each lexical item is represented in the database in several different forms: Video clips of the base form of the sign and of signed sentences in which it appears, line drawings, information checkboxes, form notation (HamNoSys and SignWriting), as well as German text.

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