SLAAASh, ASL Signbank, ASL-LEX oh my! Interested in learning more? Join us Friday, Aug 18 from 1 to 6 (Gallaudet, SLCC 3rd floor open area)

The Sign Language Acquisition: Annotation, Archiving & Sharing (SLAAASh) project involves the construction of machine-readable annotated videos of Deaf children acquiring ASL interacting with their Deaf parents and/or researchers using ASL. The videos were collected in the 1990’s and are being re-annotated for consistency and accuracy. The annotations used in the SLAAASh project crucially involve the use of ID glosses, labels used to consistently identify a sign lemma regardless of changes in its use in various contexts. The ID glosses, along with videos, lexical, and phonological information about each sign, are housed in a new ASL Signbank, to be open to researchers, built on the basis of Signbanks previously constructed for other sign languages. The ASL Signbank is being constructed to be mutually compatible with the existing publicly available ASL-LEX database, containing overlapping phonological information as well as frequency and iconicity ratings, with a unique set of visualization options. Technological improvements to ELAN provide a bridge between an annotation file and Signbank, permitting a close integration of these components for improved consistency in data coding and further research. For example, all instances of a lemma can be called up, modified, or coded through the ELAN/ Signbank bridge. The SLAAASh infrastructure can also be used for other projects annotating ASL data.  (Follow us on Twitter @ASLSLAASH

On Friday August 18, there will be three presentations given in the open area of the linguistics department at Gallaudet University. These are open to the members of the department and others who are interested.  (Note if you are unable to make the entire afternoon, you are welcome to join for whatever presentation you are interested in)

1:30-2:30  “Overview of SLAAASh” by Diane Lillo-Martin

2:45 to 3:45 “ASL Signbank and linking to ELAN” by Julie Hochgesang

4:00 to 5:00 “ASL-LEX” by Zed Sehyr

5 to 6 “Lab” where more in-depth demonstrations of ASL-LEX or ASL Signbank could be provided or one-on-one assistance for getting linked to ASL Signbank, etc.

Interpreting will be provided. If close-vision or tactile interpreting is required, please email Julie (julie.hochgesang at gallaudet.edu) and Paul (paul.dudis at gallaudet.edu) as soon as possible.