The importance of a BSL primary user corpus for sign language teaching and learning

Transcription

1 The importance of a BSL primary user corpus for sign language teaching and learning Symposium in Applied Sign Linguistics Documenting Sign Languages for Teaching and Learning Purposes. 2 nd July Jordan Fenlon, Ramas Rentelis, Rose Stamp, Kearsy Cormier & Adam Schembri

2 Background: Aims of the BSL Corpus Project Project timeline: January 2008-July 2011 To create an on-line, open-access corpus of annotated BSL digital video data that will become a shared, peer-reviewable resource and standard reference for BSL researchers and teachers To conduct corpus-based investigations of sociolinguistic variation and lexical frequency

3 Background: Methodology Filmed 30 Deaf native and nearnative signers (BSL exposure by 7 years of age) in 8 regions across the UK Total sample of 249 individuals, balanced for age, gender, and language background Participants were involved in four tasks: narrative, free conversation, interview and lexical elicitation task

4 30 minutes free conversation

5 Vocabulary task

6 Annotating the corpus Annotations completed to date are linked to specific studies on sociolinguistic variation and lexical frequency Phonological variation study (2110 tokens annotated for sign gloss and handshape of the target, preceding and following signs) Lexical variation study (signs for countries, colours, numbers and place-names = 7332 glosses) Lexical frequency study (approx. 500 signs from 50 participants in Bristol and Birmingham = 24,920 glosses) Each unique lexical item is assigned an ID gloss that is, in turn, added to our lexical database (1880 signs)

7 What can we learn from the studies and annotations done to date that will be useful for sign language teachers?

8 1. Lexical frequency study Lexical frequency can inform sign language teaching by ensuring that the most frequent signs are taught first There has been no frequency data on BSL available to date Some teachers may teach what they think they know to be most frequent within the signing community Preliminary results presented today based on our conversational data: 24,920 tokens from 50 participants in Bristol and Birmingham

9 Rank ID gloss Frequency Percentage 1 PT:PRO % 2 G:WELL % 3 PT:PRO % 4 PT % 5 GOOD % 6 PT:PRO % 7 PT:DET % 8 PT:LOC % 9 SAME % 10 RIGHT % 11 (indecipherable) % 12 WHAT % 13 G:ERM % 14 G:HEY % 15 NOW %

10 Rank ID gloss Frequency Percentage 1 GOOD % 2 SAME % 3 RIGHT % 4 WHAT % 5 NOW % 6 LOOK % 7 THINK % 8 WORK % 9 BAD % 10 DEAF % 11 WANT % 12 TRUE % 13 NO % 14 PAST % 15 GO %

11 How do these findings compare to a BSL norming study by Vinson et al. (2008) where subjective ratings for 300 lexical signs were collected from 20 deaf participants? In this study, each participant was asked to rate how often they felt they saw each sign used in the community on a scale of = I have never seen this sign 7 = I see this sign very often (nearly everyday) Vinson, D. P., Cormier, K., et al. (2008). The British Sign Language (BSL) Norms for Age of Acquisition, Familiarity and Iconicity. Behavior Research Methods 40,

12 Familiarity ranking (Vinson et al. 2008) ID gloss 1 WORK 8 2 EAT NAME 88 4 WHAT 4 5 ASK 93 6 EASY n/a 8 FINISH THINK 7 10 FRIEND INTERPRETER NEVER RIGHT 3 14 NEW LOOK2 33 Ranking from 14,956 signs from BSL Corpus conversation (based on lexical signs alone)

13 2. Lexical variation study Using data from the lexical elicitation task, it is possible to consider how signs vary from what is regarded to be traditional to a region (and from what may be taught to L2 learners). AMERICA GREEN

14 The following factors were found to be statistically significant Age: younger signers use fewer traditional signs than older signers School location: signers who attended a school outside the region use fewer traditional signs Language background: signers from a hearing family use fewer traditional signs Semantic category of the sign: Signs for countries are changing at a faster rate than number or colour signs

15 82% 60+ Variants of America 100% 16-39

16 UK place names Birmingham In-group/out-group effect for the following UK place names: Belfast Glasgow Manchester Newcastle Cardiff Bristol Birmingham Bristol Cardiff

17 Lexical elicitation vs. conversational data What signers produce in isolation (lexical elicitation) is not necessarily what they produce in conversation 371 tokens from the conversational data were analysed 78 tokens (21%) were not the same lexical variant as in the lexical elicitation task

18 Realising the full potential The work reported today is focused at the lexical level. A fully annotated corpus (for non-manual features, grammatical structure, etc.) means countless benefits to sign language teaching and learning Students can browse the corpus to familiarise themselves with signing elsewhere in the UK and of different ages In addition, tutors or institutions can use the corpus to create targeted teaching materials

19 Coming soon... All video data transferred to a digital archive (CAVA) for public access - available in July Casual viewing of the open-access data to be made available shortly via Annotations will be made available for download in the future once studies have been completed

20 Acknowledgements Thanks to the following researchers whose work influenced our research design: Trevor Johnston (Australia), Onno Crasborn (The Netherlands), Ceil Lucas (USA), McKee & Kennedy (New Zealand) Thanks to the project co-investigators (Margaret Deuchar, Frances Elton, Donall O Baoill, Rachel Sutton-Spence, Graham Turner, Bencie Woll) & Deaf Community Advisory Group members (Linda Day, Clark Denmark, Helen Foulkes, Melinda Napier, Tessa Padden, Gary Quinn, Kate Rowley & Lorna Allsop) Thanks to Sally Reynolds, Avril Hepner, Carolyn Nabarro, Dawn Marshall, Evelyn McFarland, Jackie Parker, Jeff Brattan-Wilson, Jenny Wilkins, Mark Nelson, Melinda Napier, Mischa Cooke & Sarah Lawrence Thanks to the British Deaf community & all the participants in the BSL corpus project

21 Contacts & websites Jordan Fenlon Kearsy Cormier DCAL Research Centre Project website

22 Sign type Frequency Percentage Lexical signs % Pointing signs % Gestures % Fingerspelling % Classifiers % Unknown % Buoys % Sign names %

23 Variants of America 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% % of variants produced for AMERICA Non- tradi6onal Tradi6onal