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Chapter 13. Utterance unit annotation for the Japanese Sign Language Dialogue Corpus

Towards a method for detecting interactional boundaries in spontaneous sign language dialogue
  • Mayumi Bono , Tomohiro Okada , Kouhei Kikuchi , Rui Sakaida , Victor Skobov , Yusuke Miyao and Yutaka Osugi
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Advances in Sign Language Corpus Linguistics
This chapter is in the book Advances in Sign Language Corpus Linguistics

Abstract

This chapter defines ‘utterance units’ and describes their annotation in the Japanese Sign Language (JSL) dialogue corpus, first focusing on how human annotators – native signers of JSL – identify and annotate utterance units, before reporting on part of speech (POS) tagging for JSL and semi-automatic annotation of utterance units. The utterance unit is an original concept for segmenting and annotating movement features in sign language dialogue, based on signers’ native sense. We postulate a fundamental interaction-specific unit for understanding interactional mechanisms (such as turn-taking) in sign language social interactions from the perspectives of conversation analysis and multimodal interaction studies. We explain differences between sentence and utterance units, the corpus construction and composition, and the annotation scheme, before analyzing how JSL native annotators annotated the units. Finally, we show the application potential of this research by presenting two case studies, the first exploring POS annotations, and the second a first attempt at automatic annotation using OpenPose software.

Abstract

This chapter defines ‘utterance units’ and describes their annotation in the Japanese Sign Language (JSL) dialogue corpus, first focusing on how human annotators – native signers of JSL – identify and annotate utterance units, before reporting on part of speech (POS) tagging for JSL and semi-automatic annotation of utterance units. The utterance unit is an original concept for segmenting and annotating movement features in sign language dialogue, based on signers’ native sense. We postulate a fundamental interaction-specific unit for understanding interactional mechanisms (such as turn-taking) in sign language social interactions from the perspectives of conversation analysis and multimodal interaction studies. We explain differences between sentence and utterance units, the corpus construction and composition, and the annotation scheme, before analyzing how JSL native annotators annotated the units. Finally, we show the application potential of this research by presenting two case studies, the first exploring POS annotations, and the second a first attempt at automatic annotation using OpenPose software.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Foreword ix
  4. Acknowledgements xi
  5. Notes on the contributors xii
  6. List of abbreviations and acronyms xxi
  7. Chapter 1. Sign language corpus linguistics 1
  8. Part I. Advances in sign language linguistics
  9. Chapter 2. Negative Concord in Sign Language of the Netherlands 30
  10. Chapter 3. Exploring sign-writing contact and multilingualism in the Norwegian Deaf community 66
  11. Chapter 4. Syntactic functions of nonmanuals in Russian Sign Language 90
  12. Chapter 5. A corpus-based analysis of coordinate structures in Libras 123
  13. Chapter 6. Verb classes in South African Sign Language 155
  14. Chapter 7. Exploring regional variation in the DGS Corpus 192
  15. Chapter 8. Studying microdiachronic change with the Catalan Sign Language corpus 219
  16. Part II. Advances in sign language corpus construction
  17. Chapter 9. Creating a multifaceted corpus of Swedish Sign Language 242
  18. Chapter 10. Overview of and epistemological conditions for building and using LSF corpora 262
  19. Chapter 11. W(h)ither the ASL corpus? 287
  20. Chapter 12. Developing an inventory of handshapes, locations, and movements in Hong Kong Sign Language 309
  21. Chapter 13. Utterance unit annotation for the Japanese Sign Language Dialogue Corpus 353
  22. Index 383
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.108.13bon

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Foreword ix
  4. Acknowledgements xi
  5. Notes on the contributors xii
  6. List of abbreviations and acronyms xxi
  7. Chapter 1. Sign language corpus linguistics 1
  8. Part I. Advances in sign language linguistics
  9. Chapter 2. Negative Concord in Sign Language of the Netherlands 30
  10. Chapter 3. Exploring sign-writing contact and multilingualism in the Norwegian Deaf community 66
  11. Chapter 4. Syntactic functions of nonmanuals in Russian Sign Language 90
  12. Chapter 5. A corpus-based analysis of coordinate structures in Libras 123
  13. Chapter 6. Verb classes in South African Sign Language 155
  14. Chapter 7. Exploring regional variation in the DGS Corpus 192
  15. Chapter 8. Studying microdiachronic change with the Catalan Sign Language corpus 219
  16. Part II. Advances in sign language corpus construction
  17. Chapter 9. Creating a multifaceted corpus of Swedish Sign Language 242
  18. Chapter 10. Overview of and epistemological conditions for building and using LSF corpora 262
  19. Chapter 11. W(h)ither the ASL corpus? 287
  20. Chapter 12. Developing an inventory of handshapes, locations, and movements in Hong Kong Sign Language 309
  21. Chapter 13. Utterance unit annotation for the Japanese Sign Language Dialogue Corpus 353
  22. Index 383
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