Sign Languages and the Online World Online Dictionaries & Lexicostatistics

Sign Languages and the Online World Online Dictionaries & Lexicostatistics Shi Yu1,2,3, Carlo Geraci2,3, Natasha Abner4 1 ´Ecole des Hautes ´Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2Institut Jean Nicod CNRS, 3 ´Ecole Normal Sup´erieure, 29, Rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris, France 4Department of Linguistics, University of Michigan 450 Lorch Hall 611 Tappan Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220, USA shi@shiyu.fr, carlo.geraci76@gmail.com, nabner@gmail.com Abstract Several online dictionaries documenting the lexicon of a variety of sign languages (SLs) are now available. These are rich resources for comparative studies, but there are methodological issues that must be addressed regarding how these resources are used for research purposes. We created a web-based tool for annotating the articulatory features of signs (handshape, location, movement and orientation). Videos from online dictionaries may be embedded in the tool, providing a mechanism for large-scale theoretically-informed sign language annotation. Annotations are saved in a spreadsheet format ready for quantitative and qualitative analyses. Here, we provide proof of concept for the utility of this tool in linguistic analysis. We used the SL adaptation of the Swadesh list (Woodward, 2000) and applied lexicostatistic and phylogenetic methods to a sample of 23 SLs coded using the web-based tool; supplementary historic information was gathered from the Ethnologue of World Languages and other online sources. We report results from the comparison of all articulatory features for four Asian SLs (Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Japanese SLs) and from the comparison of handshapes on the entire 23 language sample. Handshape analysis of the entire sample clusters all Asian SLs together, separated from the European, American, and Brazilian SLs in the sample, as historically expected. Within the Asian SL cluster, analyses also show, for example, marginal relatedness between Chinese and Hong Kong SLs. Keywords: Web-based annotation tool, Sign Language, Lexicostatistics, Phylogenesis, Online dictionaries 1. Introduction Lexicostatistics provides a means of determining the degree of similarity across languages by simply looking at portions of their vocabulary (Swadesh, 1971). Though such studies have been largely limited to spoken languages, promising results have been documented once similar methodologies are applied to sign languages (Woodward, 2000; McKee and Kennedy, 2000). In particular, Wood- ward (2000) proposes a sign language (SL) adaptation of the Swadesh list. Like the original Swadesh list, Wood- ward’s list contains 100 items that are meant to identify basic/universal concepts which are supposed to reveal the degree to which pairs of SLs are related. However, this method has not been systematically tested or applied to SLs. A key reason for this is a lack of reliable data and the absence of software applications that allow for easy annotation of video data. In recent years, however, many SL dictionaries have appeared on the internet and can be freely consulted, solving the empirical problem of gathering the relevant data. The existing applications (ELAN, Ilex, SignStream, etc.) for annotating video data are stand-alone applications designed primarily to work with files stored on local machines. Moreover, these appli- cations are designed with research flexibility in mind and do not come ”pre-equipped” with theoretically-informed annotating codes …

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