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  • 1.
    Bjerva, Johannes
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics. University of Groningen, The Netherlands.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Morphological complexity influences Verb–Object order in Swedish Sign Language2016In: Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity: Proceedings of the Workshop / [ed] Dominique Brunato, Felice Dell'Orletta, Giulia Venturi, Thomas François, Philippe Blache, International Committee on Computational Linguistics (ICCL) , 2016, p. 137-141Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Computational linguistic approaches to sign languages could benefit from investigating how complexity influences structure. We investigate whether morphological complexity has an effect on the order of Verb (V) and Object (O) in Swedish Sign Language (SSL), on the basis of elicited data from five Deaf signers. We find a significant difference in the distribution of the orderings OV vs. VO, based on an analysis of morphological weight. While morphologically heavy verbs exhibit a general preference for OV, humanness seems to affect the ordering in the opposite direction, with [+human] Objects pushing towards a preference for VO.

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  • 2.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Grammatisk finithet i trumaí2008Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    Traditionellt har tempusböjning och person-/numeruskongruens på verb varit de starkaste kriterierna för finithet. Det har dock visat sig vara svårapplicerade kriterier för många språk och finithet på satsnivå – huruvida en sats är självständig eller ej – har blivit en viktig fråga för definitionen.

    Uppsatsen syftar till att beskriva och analysera finithetsfenomenet utifrån språket trumaí.

    Det tycks finnas flera fenomen som är tecken på en finithetsdistinktion i trumaí, framför allt -n/-e-klitikan som markerar 3Abs på verbet vid absolutivargumentets frånvaro, samt FT-partiklarna som har en tempusfunktion. För imperativ verkar det vara så att imperativpartiklarna har en intern distribution baserad på person och animathet hos absolutivargumentet, vilket kan tolkas som att det finns en argumentkongruens frikopplad från den semantiska inkorporeringen av andraperson som subjekt. Gällande finithet på satsnivå finns det i trumaí både finita och infinita satser som kan fungera som bisatser. I strukturer där verbet beter sig prototypiskt är satsen finit, medan andra strukturers verb tycks ha rört sig mot att bete sig nominellt, varpå satsen fungerar annorlunda och är infinit.

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  • 3.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Här är 4 procent av invånarna döva2013In: Dövas tidning, ISSN 1402-1978, Vol. 4, p. 13-13Article in journal (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
  • 4.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Härmed tecknar jag dig ...2017In: Språktidningen, ISSN 1654-5028, no 7, p. 52-57Article in journal (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
  • 5.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Object marking in the signed modality: Verbal and nominal strategies in Swedish Sign Language and other sign languages2017In: Sign Language and Linguistics, ISSN 1387-9316, E-ISSN 1569-996X, Vol. 20, no 2, p. 279-287Article in journal (Refereed)
  • 6.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics.
    Object marking in the signed modality: Verbal and nominal strategies in Swedish Sign Language and other sign languages2017Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    In this dissertation, I investigate various aspects of object marking and how these manifest themselves in the signed modality. The main focus is on Swedish Sign Language (SSL), the national sign language of Sweden, which is the topic of investigation in all five studies. Two of the studies adopt a comparative perspective, including other sign languages as well. The studies comprise a range of data, including corpus data, elicited production, and acceptability judgments, and combine quantitative and qualitative methods in the analyses.

    The dissertation begins with an overview of the topics of valency, argument structure, and object marking, primarily from a spoken language perspective. Here, the interactions between semantics and morphosyntax are presented from a typological perspective, introducing differential object marking as a key concept. With regard to signed language, object marking is discussed in terms of both verbal and nominal strategies.

    Verbal strategies of object marking among sign languages include directional verbs, object handshape classifiers, and embodied perspective in signing. The first study investigates the use of directionality and object handshapes as object marking strategies in Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL), Israeli Sign Language (ISL), and SSL. It is shown that the strategies generally display different alignments in terms of the types of objects targeted, which is uniform across languages, but that directionality is much more marginal in ABSL than in the other two languages. Also, we see that there is a connection between object marking strategies and the animacy of the object, and that the strategies, object animacy, and word order preferences interact. In the second and third studies, SSL is investigated with regard to the transitive–reflexive distinction. Here, we see that there are interactional effects between object handshapes and the perspective taken by the signer. This points to intricate iconic motivations of combining and structuring complex verb sequences, such as giving preference to agent focusing structures (e.g., agent perspective and handling handshapes). Furthermore, the use of space is identified as a crucial strategy for reference tracking, especially when expressing semantically transitive events.

    Nominal strategies include object pronouns and derivations of the sign PERSON. The fourth study provides a detailed account of the object pronoun OBJPRO in SSL, which is the first in-depth description of this sign. It is found that the sign is in widespread use in SSL, often corresponds closely to object pronouns of spoken Swedish, and is argued to be grammaticalized from the lexical sign PERSON. In the final study, the possible existence of object pronouns in other sign languages is investigated by using a sample of 24 languages. This analysis reveals that the feature is found mostly in the Nordic countries, suggesting areal contact phenomena. However, the study also shows that there are a number of derivations of PERSON, such as reflexive pronouns, agreement auxiliaries, and case markers. The use of PERSON as a source of grammaticalization for these functions is attributed to both semantic and phonological properties of the sign.

    This dissertation is unique in that it is dedicated to the topic of object marking in the signed modality. It brings a variety of perspectives and methods together in order to investigate the domain of object marking, cross-linguistically and cross-modally.

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  • 7.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Persontecken avslöjar vilka vi är2017In: Dövas tidning, ISSN 1402-1978, Vol. 3, p. 7-7Article in journal (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
  • 8.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Annika Herrmann (eds.), A matter of complexity: Subordination in sign languages2016In: Nordic Journal of Linguistics, ISSN 0332-5865, E-ISSN 1502-4717, Vol. 39, no 3, p. 311-317Article, book review (Other academic)
  • 9.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics.
    Revisiting Reduplication: Toward a description of reduplication in predicative signs in Swedish Sign Language2011Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This study investigates the use of reduplication with predicative signs in Swedish Sign Language (SSL), and also the related phenomena doubling and displacement.

    Reduplication in SSL typically expresses plurality of events and/or referents, but may also express intensification, ongoing event or generic activity. There is a distinction between external and internal events with reduplication: external reduplication expresses some event happening over and over at different points in time and/or with different referents, and is associated with a frequentative/habitual reading; internal reduplication expresses some event consisting of several e.g. movements/actions and is associated with an ongoing reading. Only external expression seems to be applicable to stative constructions, as one would expect. The study also found a phenomenon not previously described: oral reduplication without manual reduplication. This process is found to have the ongoing functions with telic predicates, such that it focuses on the telic predicate as a single event in progress, and thus replaces the function of manual reduplication, which, with telic predicates, would instead express several events. The reading of reduplicated signs is associated with the semantics of the sign reduplicated, and it is also associated with the phonological citation form of the sign—monosyllabic signs tend to get pluractional reading; bisyllabic signs tend to get an ongoing reading. Also, the reading expressed by reduplication is connected to the presence/absence of oral reduplication.

    Reduplication generally does not occur in negative constructions. This study shows that inherently negative signs may be reduplicated, but reduplicated predicates are negated according to other strategies than for non-reduplicated predicates, thus reduplication has the largest scope.

    Doubling and displacement are both associated mainly with plural referents, and it is in this respect that they are related to reduplication, and they both occur frequently with reduplication.

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  • 10.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Types and trends of name signs in the Swedish Sign Language community2017In: SKY Journal of Linguistics, ISSN 1456-8438, E-ISSN 1796-279X, Vol. 30, p. 7-34Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper investigates the domain of name signs (i.e., signs used as personal names) in the Swedish Sign Language (SSL) community. The data are based on responses from an online questionnaire, in which Deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing participants answered questions about the nature of their name signs. The collected questionnaire data comprise 737 name signs, distributed across five main types and 24 subtypes of name signs, following the categorization of previous work on SSL. Signs are grouped according to sociolinguistic variables such as age, gender, and identity (e.g., Deaf or hearing), as well as the relationship between name giver and named (e.g., family or friends). The results show that name signs are assigned at different ages between the groups, such that children of Deaf parents are named earlier than other groups, and that Deaf and hard of hearing individuals are normally named during their school years. It is found that the distribution of name sign types is significantly different between females and males, with females more often having signs denoting physical appearance, whereas males have signs related to personality/behavior. Furthermore, it is shown that the distribution of sign types has changed over time, with appearance signs losing ground to personality/behavior signs – most clearly for Deaf females. Finally, there is a marginally significant difference in the distribution of sign types based on whether or not the name giver was Deaf. The study is the first to investigate name signs and naming customs in the SSL community statistically – synchronically and diachronically – and one of the few to do so for any sign language.

  • 11.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Hörberg, Thomas
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.
    Östling, Robert
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics.
    Distribution and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language2016In: Sign Language and Linguistics, ISSN 1387-9316, E-ISSN 1569-996X, Vol. 19, no 2, p. 143-196Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In this paper, we investigate frequency and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language (SSL) using the SSL Corpus. The duration of signs is correlated with frequency, with high-frequency items having shorter duration than low-frequency items. Similarly, function words (e.g. pronouns) have shorter duration than content words (e.g. nouns). In compounds, forms annotated as reduced display shorter duration. Fingerspelling duration correlates with word length of corresponding Swedish words, and frequency and word length play a role in the lexicalization of fingerspellings. The sign distribution in the SSL Corpus shows a great deal of cross-linguistic similarity with other sign languages in terms of which signs appear as high-frequency items, and which categories of signs are distributed across text types (e.g. conversation vs. narrative). We find a correlation between an increase in age and longer mean sign duration, but see no significant difference in sign duration between genders.

  • 12.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Jantunen, Tommi
    Mesch, Johanna
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Kimmelman, Vadim
    Oomen, Marloes
    de Lint, Vanja
    Transitivity prominence within and across modalities2018Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The idea of transitivity as a scalar phenomenon is well known (e.g., Hopper & Thompson 1980; Tsunoda 1985; Haspelmath 2015). However, as with most areas of linguistic study, it has been almost exclusively studied with a focus on spoken languages. A rare exception to this is Kimmelman (2016), who investigates transitivity in Russian Sign Language (RSL) on the basis of corpus data. Kimmelman attempts to establish a transitivity prominence hierarchy of RSL verbs, and compares this ranking to the verb meanings found in the ValPal database (Hartmann, Haspelmath & Bradley 2013). He arrives at the conclusion that using the frequency of overt objects in corpus data is a successful measure of transitivity prominence, and that the prominence ranking of RSL verbs correlate with that found for spoken languages in Haspelmath (2015). In this paper, we expand on these intra- and cross-modal comparisons of transitivity prominence by introducing four other sign languages to the sample: Finnish Sign Language (FinSL), Swedish Sign Language (SSL), Sign Language to the Netherlands (NGT), and German Sign Language (DGS). FinSL and SSL are known to be historically related (cf. Bergman & Engberg-Pedersen 2010), while the other are not related, which allows us to look at both modality and relatedness effects in our sample. Of the 80 core verb meanings in the ValPal database, Kimmelman (2016) included the 25 most frequent verbs in his corpus. For our study, we have annotated all occurrences of these 25 verb meanings in a subset of the corpora of FinSL (2h 40min; 18,446 tokens), SSL (2h 5min; 16,724 tokens), NGT (≈80,000 tokens), and DGS (≈58,000 tokens). We annotate whether a verb occurs with an overt object as well as the type of object (direct, indirect, clausal, or a locative). Looking at the ValPal verb meanings with ≥5 sign tokens in all four new languages, we arrive at 12 verbs that are found in all five sign languages and the spoken languages (SpL) of the ValPal database – see Table 1. In Table 1, we see that there is a general agreement across languages – both signed and spoken – in how transitivity prominent a verb meaning is. Spearman’s rank correlation shows a significant (p<0.05) correlation between all possible pairs except SSL–SpL (p=0.091) and SSL– RSL (p=0.074), corroborating Kimmelman’s finding that there are patterns of transitivity prominence present across languages and modalities. It is interesting that SSL thus diverges from the other sign languages in this sample: this deserves further investigation. We also wanted to investigate the transitivity prominence as a property of individual languages. In order to do so, we took the individual languages of the ValPal database and measured each verb meaning in each language with regard to its transitivity prominence. This meant calculating how many of the verb forms associated with a specific verb meaning took a P argument. Note that this is quite different from calculating transitivity prominence based on corpus data: with corpora, we calculated the proportion of verbal tokens occurring with an overt object, and with the ValPal database, we calculated the proportion of transitive verb associated with a particular concept. We included the 12 verb meanings found across all languages (the five sign languages and 33 spoken languages). We then calculated mean distances across verb meanings and languages, and plotted this with multidimensional scaling in Figure 1. In the figure, we see that the five sign languages form a part of a cluster, suggesting either modality-based similarities, or similarities that come with the difference in data (corpus data rather than lexical data). On the other hand, sign languages as a group are not clearly opposed to spoken languages as a group, which implies that the corpus-based and lexical calculations of transitivity are comparable. Interestingly, FinSL and SSL are not more strongly associated than the other sign languages, which implies that their historical relatedness is not directly relevant to transitivity. In our presentation, we will present the results and the conclusions in more detail, as well as discuss the possibilities of using corpus data to establish valency patterns for languages in the signed modality.

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  • 13.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Lepic, Ryan
    Commentary on Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998)2014In: Sign Language and Linguistics, ISSN 1387-9316, E-ISSN 1569-996X, Vol. 17, no 2, p. 241-250Article in journal (Refereed)
  • 14.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics.
    Lepic, Ryan
    Spatial metaphors in antonym pairs across sign languages2020In: Sign Language and Linguistics, ISSN 1387-9316, E-ISSN 1569-996X, Vol. 23, no 1-2, p. 112-141Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    We analyze sign locations in 776 signs from 16 antonym pairs across 27 sign languages to examine metaphorical mappings of emotional valence (positive vs. negative) along different spatial axes. We conduct both an automatic and a manual analysis of sign location and movement direction, to investigate cross-linguistic patterns of spatial valence contrasts. Contrary to our hypothesis, negative valence concepts are generally articulated higher up than their positive counterparts. However, when we consider movement in space, we find that although signs generally move downward over time, positive valence concepts are associated with upward movements more often than their negative counterparts. This points to a systematic pattern for vertical valence contrasts – a known metaphor across languages – iconically mapped onto physical sign articulation. We similarly, but surprisingly, find a difference in movements along the sagittal axis, such that outward movement is associated with positive valence concepts more often than negative.

  • 15.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Lepic, Ryan
    Belsitzman, Gal
    Articulatory plurality is a property of lexical plurals in sign language2016In: Lingvisticæ investigationes, ISSN 0378-4169, E-ISSN 1569-9927, Vol. 39, no 2, p. 391-407Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Sign languages make use of paired articulators (the two hands), hence manual signs may be either one- or two-handed. Although two-handedness has previously been regarded a purely formal feature, studies have argued morphologically two-handed forms are associated with some types of inflectional plurality. Moreover, recent studies across sign languages have demonstrated that even lexically two-handed signs share certain semantic properties. In this study, we investigate lexically plural concepts in ten different sign languages, distributed across five sign language families, and demonstrate that such concepts are preferentially represented with two-handed forms, across all the languages in our sample. We argue that this is because the signed modality with its paired articulators enables the languages to iconically represent conceptually plural meanings.

  • 16.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Mesch, Johanna
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Wallin, Lars
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Segmenting the Swedish Sign Language corpus: On the possibilities of using visual cues as a basis for syntactic segmentation2014In: Workshop Proceedings: 6th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Beyond the Manual Channel / [ed] Onno Crasborn, Eleni Efthimiou, Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen, Johanna Mesch, Paris: ELRA , 2014, p. 7-10Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper deals with the possibility of conducting syntactic segmentation of the Swedish Sign Language Corpus (SSLC) on the basisof the visual cues from both manual and nonmanual signals. The SSLC currently features segmentation on the lexical level only, whichis why the need for a linguistically valid segmentation on e.g. the clausal level would be very useful for corpus-based studies on thegrammatical structure of Swedish Sign Language (SSL). An experiment was carried out letting seven Deaf signers of SSL each segmenttwo short texts (one narrative and one dialogue) using ELAN, based on the visual cues they perceived as boundaries. This was latercompared to the linguistic analysis done by a language expert (also a Deaf signer of SSL), who segmented the same texts into whatwas considered syntactic clausal units. Furthermore, these segmentation procedures were compared to the segmentation done for theSwedish translations also found in the SSLC. The results show that though the visual and syntactic segmentations overlap in manycases, especially when a number of cues coincide, the visual segmentation is not consistent enough to be used as a means of segmentingsyntactic units in the SSLC.

  • 17.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Sandler, Wendy
    Aronoff, Mark
    Sign Language Linguistics2014In: Oxford Bibliographies, Oxford University Press, 2014Chapter in book (Refereed)
  • 18.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Wirén, Mats
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics.
    Mesch, Johanna
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Gärdenfors, Moa
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Towards an Annotation of Syntactic Structure in the Swedish Sign Language Corpus2016In: Workshop Proceedings: 7th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining / [ed] Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen, Johanna Mesch, Paris: ELRA , 2016, p. 19-24Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This paper describes on-going work on extending the annotation of the Swedish Sign Language Corpus (SSLC) with a level of syntactic structure. The basic annotation of SSLC in ELAN consists of six tiers: four for sign glosses (two tiers for each signer; one for each of a signer’s hands), and two for written Swedish translations (one for each signer). In an additional step by Östling et al. (2015), all ¨ glosses of the corpus have been further annotated for parts of speech. Building on the previous steps, we are now developing annotation of clause structure for the corpus, based on meaning and form. We define a clause as a unit in which a predicate asserts something about one or more elements (the arguments). The predicate can be a (possibly serial) verbal or nominal. In addition to predicates and their arguments, criteria for delineating clauses include non-manual features such as body posture, head movement and eye gaze. The goal of this work is to arrive at two additional annotation tier types in the SSLC: one in which the sign language texts are segmented into clauses, and the other in which the individual signs are annotated for their argument types.

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  • 19.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Östling, Robert
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics.
    Iconic Locations in Swedish Sign Language: Mapping Form to Meaning with Lexical Databases2017In: Proceedings of the 21st Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics, NoDaLiDa / [ed] Jörg Tiedemann, Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2017, p. 221-225, article id 026Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In this paper, we describe a method for mapping the phonological feature location of Swedish Sign Language (SSL) signs to the meanings in the Swedish semantic dictionary SALDO. By doing so, we observe clear differences in the distribution of meanings associated with different locations on the body. The prominence of certain locations for specific meanings clearly point to iconic mappings between form and meaning in the lexicon of SSL, which pinpoints modalityspecific properties of the visual modality.

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  • 20.
    Börstell, Carl
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Östling, Robert
    University of Helsinki, Finland.
    Visualizing Lects in a Sign Language Corpus: Mining Lexical Variation Data in Lects of Swedish Sign Language2016In: Workshop Proceedings: 7th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining / [ed] Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen, Johanna Mesch, Paris: ELRA , 2016, p. 13-18Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In this paper, we discuss the possibilities for mining lexical variation data across (potential) lects in Swedish Sign Language (SSL). The data come from the SSL Corpus (SSLC), a continuously expanding corpus of SSL, its latest release containing 43 307 annotated sign tokens, distributed over 42 signers and 75 time-aligned video and annotation files. After extracting the raw data from the SSLC annotation files, we created a database for investigating lexical distribution/variation across three possible lects, by merging the raw data with an external metadata file, containing information about the age, gender, and regional background of each of the 42 signers in the corpus. We go on to present a first version of an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) that can be used as a tool for investigating lexical variation across different lects, and demonstrate a few interesting finds. This tool makes it easier for researchers and non-researchers alike to have the corpus frequencies for individual signs visualized in an instant, and the tool can easily be updated with future expansions of the SSLC.

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  • 21. Jantunen, Tommi
    et al.
    Mesch, Johanna
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    GIVE or TAKE: Transitivity prominence of Finnish Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language verbs2017Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In this paper we apply methodology presented in Kimmelman (2016) and investigate the transitivityprominence of verbs in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) and Swedish Sign Language (SSL). Specifically,we ask how similar or different FinSL and SSL verbs are in terms of their transitivity prominence,and how the transitivity prominence of FinSL and SSL verbs compares with that of verbs inother languages. The term transitivity prominence refers to the relative frequency with which a verboccurs with an object. Haspelmath (2015) has shown that in spoken languages, verbs form a rankedcontinuum between those that are highly transitivity prominent and those that occur with no objectat all. Recently, Kimmelman (2016) has argued that Haspelmath's ranking applies also to the verbsof Russian Sign Language (RSL).Our investigation is based on annotated corpus data comprising narratives, conversations andpresentations. For FinSL, we use material from 20 signers (2h 40min, 18446 sign tokens) and forSSL from 28 signers (1h 54min, 15186 sign tokens). From this data, we identified 18 verb lexemeswhich all have enough tokens and which are all comparable between languages. In FinSL, the totalnumber of verb tokens is 745 and in SSL the corresponding number is 579. All the verbs were annotatedfor overt direct and indirect objects and for overt clausal complements. The annotation workwas carried out by different annotators following common guidelines.Concerning the results, our data suggests that there are clear similarities in what verbs rankhighest (e.g. GIVE, TAKE) and what lowest (e.g. HAPPY, COLD) in terms of their transitivity prominencein FinSL and SSL. On the basis of Haspelmath (2015) and Kimmelman (2016), these are thesame verbs that are ranked highest and lowest also in spoken languages and in RSL (Table 1).However, the data also shows that certain verbs (e.g. SEARCH, TALK, PLAY) may differ considerablyin the position they occupy in the ranking. Although some of these differences can be assumed to betrue differences between languages, we suspect that some may, despite our best efforts, be traceableback to issues relating to the type of data as well as to the way the samples were formed and objectsannotated. In our presentation, we will present the results of our comparative study and discuss thedata and methodology-related issues in more detail.

  • 22. Lepic, Ryan
    et al.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Belsitzman, Gal
    Sandler, Wendy
    Taking meaning in hand: Iconic motivations in two-handed signs2016In: Sign Language and Linguistics, ISSN 1387-9316, E-ISSN 1569-996X, Vol. 19, no 1, p. 37-81Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Traditionally in sign language research, the issue of whether a lexical sign is articulated with one hand or two has been treated as a strictly phonological matter. We argue that accounting for two-handed signs also requires considering meaning as a motivating factor. We report results from a Swadesh list comparison, an analysis of semantic patterns among two-handed signs, and a picture-naming task. Comparing four unrelated languages, we demonstrate that the two hands are recruited to encode various relationship types in sign language lexicons. We develop the general principle that inherently "plural" concepts are straightforwardly mapped onto our paired human hands, resulting in systematic use of the two hands across sign languages. In our analysis, "plurality" subsumes four primary relationship types — interaction, location, dimension, and composition — and we predict that signs with meanings that encompass these relationships — such as 'meet', 'empty', 'large', or 'machine' — will preferentially be two-handed in any sign language.

  • 23. Meir, Irit
    et al.
    Aronoff, Mark
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Hwang, So-One
    Ilkbasaran, Deniz
    Kastner, Itamar
    Lepic, Ryan
    Lifshitz Ben-Basat, Adi
    Padden, Carol
    Sandler, Wendy
    The effect of being human and the basis of grammatical word order: Insights from novel communication systems and young sign languages2017In: Cognition, ISSN 0010-0277, E-ISSN 1873-7838, Vol. 158, p. 189-207Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This study identifies a central factor that gives rise to the different word orders found in the world’s languages. In the last decade, a new window on this long-standing question has been provided by data from young sign languages and invented gesture systems. Previous work has assumed that word order in both invented gesture systems and young sign languages is driven by the need to encode the semantic/syntactic roles of the verb’s arguments. Based on the responses of six groups of participants, three groups of hearing participants who invented a gestural system on the spot, and three groups of signers of relatively young sign languages, we identify a major factor in determining word order in the production of utterances in novel and young communication systems, not suggested by previous accounts, namely the salience of the arguments in terms of their human/animacy properties: human arguments are introduced before inanimate arguments (‘human first’). This conclusion is based on the difference in word order patterns found between responses to depicted simple events that vary as to whether both subject and object are human or whether the subject is human and the object inanimate. We argue that these differential patterns can be accounted for uniformly by the ‘human first’ principle. Our analysis accounts for the prevalence of SOV order in clauses with an inanimate object in all groups (replicating results of previous separate studies of deaf signers and hearing gesturers) and the prevalence of both SOV and OSV in clauses with a human object elicited from the three groups of participants who have the least interference from another linguistic system (nonliterate deaf signers who have had little or no exposure to another language). It also provides an explanation for the basic status of SOV order suggested by other studies, as well as the scarcity of the OSV order in languages of the world, despite its appearance in novel communication systems. The broadest implication of this study is that the basic cognitive distinction between humans and inanimate entities is a crucial factor in setting the wheels of word ordering in motion.

  • 24.
    Riemer Kankkonen, Nikolaus
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Björkstrand, Thomas
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Mesch, Johanna
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Crowdsourcing for the Swedish Sign Language Dictionary2018In: 8th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Involving the Language Community: Proceedings / [ed] Mayumi Bono, Eleni Efthimiou, Stavroula-Evita Fotinea, Thomas Hanke, Julie Hochgesang, Jette Kristoffersen, Johanna Mesch, Yutaka Osugi, European Language Resources Association, 2018, p. 171-174Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In this paper, we describe how we are actively using the Swedish Sign Language (SSL) community in collecting and documenting signs and lexical variation for our language resources, particularly the online Swedish Sign Language Dictionary (SSLD). Apart from using the SSL Corpus as a source of input for new signs and lexical variation in the SSLD, we also involve the community in two ways: first, we interact with SSL signers directly at various venues, collecting signs and judgments about signs; second, we discuss sign usage, lexical variation, and sign formation with SSL signers on social media, particularly through a Facebook group in which we both actively engage in and monitor discussions about SSL. Through these channels, we are able to get direct feedback on our language documentation work and improve on what has become the main lexicographic resource for SSL. We describe the process of simultaneously using corpus data, judgment and elicitation data, and crowdsourcing and discussion groups for enhancing the SSLD, and give examples of findings pertaining to lexical variation resulting from this work.

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    fulltext
  • 25.
    Östling, Robert
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics. Radboud University, Netherlands.
    Courtaux, Servane
    Visual Iconicity Across Sign Languages: Large-Scale Automated Video Analysis of Iconic Articulators and Locations2018In: Frontiers in Psychology, E-ISSN 1664-1078, Vol. 9, article id 725Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    We use automatic processing of 120,000 sign videos in 31 different sign languages to show a cross-linguistic pattern for two types of iconic form–meaning relationships in the visual modality. First, we demonstrate that the degree of inherent plurality of concepts, based on individual ratings by non-signers, strongly correlates with the number of hands used in the sign forms encoding the same concepts across sign languages. Second, we show that certain concepts are iconically articulated around specific parts of the body, as predicted by the associational intuitions by non-signers. The implications of our results are both theoretical and methodological. With regard to theoretical implications, we corroborate previous research by demonstrating and quantifying, using a much larger material than previously available, the iconic nature of languages in the visual modality. As for the methodological implications, we show how automatic methods are, in fact, useful for performing large-scale analysis of sign language data, to a high level of accuracy, as indicated by our manual error analysis.

    Download full text (pdf)
    fulltext
  • 26.
    Östling, Robert
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Gärdenfors, Moa
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Wirén, Mats
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics.
    Universal Dependencies for Swedish Sign Language2017In: Proceedings of the 21st Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics, NoDaLiDa / [ed] Jörg Tiedemann, Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press, 2017, p. 303-308Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    We describe the first effort to annotate a signed language with syntactic dependency structure: the Swedish Sign Language portion of the Universal Dependencies treebanks. The visual modality presents some unique challenges in analysis and annotation, such as the possibility of both hands articulating separate signs simultaneously, which has implications for the concept of projectivity in dependency grammars. Our data is sourced from the Swedish Sign Language Corpus, and if used in conjunction these resources contain very richly annotated data: dependency structure and parts of speech, video recordings, signer metadata, and since the whole material is also translated into Swedish the corpus is also a parallel text.

    Download full text (pdf)
    fulltext
  • 27.
    Östling, Robert
    et al.
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Computational Linguistics.
    Börstell, Carl
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.
    Wallin, Lars
    Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, Sign Language.
    Enriching the Swedish Sign Language Corpus with Part of Speech Tags Using Joint Bayesian Word Alignment and Annotation Transfer2015In: Proceedings of the 20th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics: NODALIDA 2015, May 11-13, 2015, Vilnius, Lithuania / [ed] Beáta Megyesi, Linköping University Electronic Press, 2015, p. 263-268Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    We have used a novel Bayesian model of joint word alignment and part of speech (PoS) annotation transfer to enrich the Swedish Sign Language Corpus with PoS tags. The annotations were then hand-corrected in order to both improve annotation quality for the corpus, and allow the empirical evaluation presented herein.

    Download full text (pdf)
    Enriching the Swedish Sign Language Corpus with Part of Speech Tags Using Joint Bayesian Word Alignment and Annotation Transfer
1 - 27 of 27
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