1. Building Sign Language Corpora in North America Workshop at Gallaudet University May 21, 2011

2. Sign Language Corpus using SignWriting Adam Frost frost@signwriting.org Member of the Deaf Action Committee for SignWriting (DAC)

3. A Corpus Needs to be… Representative Comprehensive Accessible Machine-readable Searchable SignWriting Can Do All Of The Above!

4. What is SignWriting Writing System for Sign Languages Exist for 30+ years Used for Several Sign Languages Used in Several Types of Writing – Children’s Stories – Bible – Blogs

5. Some Examples Video of Cherie Wren’s Translation of The Cat in the Hat

6. Written by Cherie Wren and Edited by Adam Frost from the Video of Cherie Wren’s translation of The Cat in the Hat

7. Syntax Level Count Sentences: 6 – Declarative: 4 – Question/Rhetoric: 2 Signs: 29 – 2 Signs Identical – 2 Signs Manually Identical (Different expressions)

8. Handshapes Used 7 1 10 4 1 3 2 4 3 2 1 4 1 2

9. Movements Used 3 1 3 1 3 1 5 2 1 2 1 4 2 1 7 2 1

10. Head and Face Used 24 1 5 1 2 5 8 5 1 3 2 1 2 1

11. Dynamic and Body Used 4 1 2 Punctuation Used 3 4 2

12. How It Was Done?

13. With The Preliminary Unicode

14. Preliminary Unicode Can… Be used within programs like ELAN Used to search for specific features However Without a plug-in, symbols will not be visible A box will appear in place like previous slides No plug-in to date, but could be made if needed

15. Some Notes Analytical Written ≠ Daily Writing Location in Cluster ≠ Location of Sign Locations were not encoded in example Special location symbols rarely used – Research – Never in daily writing

16. Thanks To… The committee of this workshop – Gaurav Mathur – Gene Mirus – Julie Hochgesang Cherie Wren for work on The Cat in the Hat Steve Slevinski for the SignPuddle software Valerie Sutton for SignWriting For more information Go to signwriting.orgsignwriting.org