Background. What is a corpus? Why a corpus project of BSL? Documenting British Sign Language: The BSL Corpus Project

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1 Documenting British Sign Language: The BSL Corpus Project Adam Schembri La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia Jordan Fenlon, Ramas Rentelis, Rosemary Stamp & Kearsy Cormier University College London, England Background British Sign Language (BSL) 1760>2011 Australian Sign Language (Auslan) 1860>2011 New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) 1880>2011 What is a corpus? A collection of language recordings A representative sample of the community A mix of different language samples Can be searched by computer Can be shared as a reference for research Video annotation software, such as ELAN, has made corpus projects for sign languages possible Why a corpus project of BSL? More research needed on sign language linguisitics (since Sutton-Spence & Woll 1999) Only one dictionary (Brien, 1992), but fewer than 2000 signs 1

2 Why a corpus project of BSL? Language documentation To address concerns in British Deaf community about BSL variation and change: preserving heritage forms of BSL Better language description Much existing linguistics work is based on data collected from a small number of people s judgements, intuitions, and opinions, or from small datasets To provide evidence and material for sign language teaching and interpreter training Data sharing The data collected, and the linguistic analyses of this data, can be shared with researchers and with deaf communities Aims of the BSL Corpus Project To create an on-line, open-access collection of BSL digital video data To research BSL variation and change and lexical frequency Project timeline: January 2008-June 2011 Not the first sign language corpus project 2004-present: Australian Sign Language (Auslan) Corpus Project by Trevor Johnston (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) How did we do it? 8 cities At least 30 people for each city = 249 signers Auslan and BSL closely related sign languages All 8 cities have a strong deaf community and have (or have had) a residential Deaf school Who did we film? How did we find everyone? Deaf native or near-native (learnt to sign before the age of 7) Must have lived in the region for 10 years or more Balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, and language background Deaf community fieldworkers (one to each region) recruited 30 Deaf people that match project criteria Filmed over 2-4 visits No hearing people present during filming 2

3 249 = 125 pairs blue background screen two lights plain colored clothing (back-up T-shirts) chairs without arms as few long-term partners/spouses filmed together as possible What did we film? July 2012 Where are we now? 249 participants filmed Some translation of the data completed Studies on sign language variation completed Almost 40,000 signs annotated in ELAN Video data available online since August 2011 Awaiting further funding from 4 applications Sign language variation Signs produced during conversation do not always look the same as they do in the dictionary What are we finding so far? We want the corpus to tell us why and when this might happen 3

4 1 handshape variation We looked for signs with in the conversation data and asked. 10 tokens from 211 signers = 2110 tokens 1. Is it the 1 handshape or a different handshape? 2. What type of sign changed a lot? 3. What is the handshape of the sign before and after it? 4. Is there a link to social factors? Answer: 54% of signs in our data changed handshape 54% 46% 1. Is it the 1 handshape or a different handshape? 2. What type of sign changed a lot? 3. What is the handshape of the sign before and after it? 4. Is there a link to social factors? Answer: Most of the signs that changed were pointing signs Content signs HEARING Grammatical signs BUT WHAT WHY THINK TALK 15% 69% ME YOU THERE Pointing signs 4

5 1. Is it the 1 handshape or a different handshape? 2. What type of sign changed a lot? 3. Does the handshape of the sign before and after have an effect? 4. Is there a link to social factors? Answer: Yes If the sign before or after is different then we might see a change in handshape Before Before? BAD ASTHMA ME BAD ASTHMA ME After After? ONE BAD THAT ONE BAD THAT 5

6 Before But if the sign before or after is the same handshape, it is likely that we will not see a change? ME THINK YOU Before ME THINK YOU 1. Is it the 1 handshape or a different handshape? 2. What type of sign changed a lot? 3. What is the handshape of the sign before and after it? 4. Is there a link to social factors? So our research tells us Answer: We couldn t find any Lots of signs change their handshape Pointing sign change their handshape more than others types The handshape before and after has an effect Pointing signs explain more changes in handshape than the sign before and after 6

7 Why is this important? Important for sign language teaching and interpreter training What else are we finding so far? The fact that pointing signs change more than other signs tells us something about the signs in the language Like spoken languages, BSL has regional dialects which are largely based on the location of residential schools for deaf children e.g. SIX Manchester In 1982, researchers found that around 50% of deaf signers from Bristol had problems understanding signing from other regions. Bristol But a number of changes have taken place over 30 years London Deaf people are travelling more There is more signing on television Residential schools are being closed down Observations from you, the Deaf community, suggest that there is less variation in BSL than before We used the corpus to find out: 1. Are signs becoming more standard in BSL? 2. How is this linked to social factors (age, gender, region)? 7

8 We looked at signs for countries and signs for colours and signs for numbers And we asked. if they used a sign that was not traditional to a region, what reasons can we find to explain this? Total: 7332 tokens Answer: younger signers are using different signs more Is it linked to age? 8

9 Answer: if they went to a school outside their region, they might use a different sign Is it linked to where they went to school? Answer: signers with deaf parents are more likely to use traditional signs Is it linked to their language background? Then we asked Answer: signs for countries are changing faster than others are all three sign types changing at the same rate? 9

10 Number sign SEVENTEEN in Manchester Other Traditional So if people are using different signs, what signs are they using instead? Variant 1 Number sign SEVENTEEN in Birmingham Country example 1: AMERICA Variants used for the number sign SEVENTEEN in Birmingham Traditional % of participants Variant 1 Variant 2 100% 80% 60% Non- tradi6onal Tradi6onal % Age (in years) 20% 0% % of variants produced for the sign: AMERICA Country example 2: INDIA Summary of variation studies 100% 80% 60% 40% Non- tradi6onal Tradi6onal Traditional signs are being used less Some signs are changing faster than others Younger signers are using widelyrecognised number signs from Bristol & London 20% 0% Age (in years) % variants produced for the sign: INDIA 10

11 What is a corpus? What next? Representative Fixed size Must be able to search quickly What is a corpus? Representative Fixed size Must be able to search quickly What is a corpus? Representative Fixed size Must be able to search quickly More work needs to be done for the entire corpus to be searchable BSL Corpus Project II Using ELAN for sign language research DEMO? More annotations Linguistic description of BSL Collect more data? 11

12 The BSL corpus is for everyone Contact: Kearsy Cormier BSL Corpus Project: Acknowledgements Thanks to the following researchers whose work influenced our research design: Trevor Johnston (Australia), Onno Crasborn (The Netherlands), Ceil Lucas (USA), David McKee & Graeme Kennedy (New Zealand) Thanks to the project co-investigators (Kearsy Cormier, 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 12