From 4f314778ddd088b7e481406b6d016be7cb5516d5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Amit Moryossef Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:16:26 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 1/4] Add reference to content questions across sign languages Cite Gavrilescu et al. (2024) in the Sign Language Linguistics Overview, illustrating how non-manual markers cue sentence type for content questions across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) --- src/index.md | 2 ++ src/references.bib | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 22 insertions(+) diff --git a/src/index.md b/src/index.md index c39c0bf8..a087f365 100644 --- a/src/index.md +++ b/src/index.md @@ -121,6 +121,8 @@ Similarly to tone in spoken languages, the face and torso can convey additional Facial expressions can modify adjectives, adverbs, and verbs; a head shake can negate a phrase or sentence; eye direction can help indicate referents. @kimmelman-etal-2024-headshakes apply OpenFace to corpus data from Sign Language of the Netherlands, showing that the linguistic function of a headshake (lexical, morphological, or prosodic) systematically affects its phonetic properties such as amplitude and peak velocity. +Non-manual markers such as furrowed eyebrows further serve as primary cues for sentence type, for example distinguishing content questions from declaratives, and @gavrilescu-etal-2024-content compared corpus, elicitation, and fieldwork methods across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages to characterize the distribution of wh-signs and their associated non-manuals. + ###### Referencing {-} The signer can introduce referents in discourse either by pointing to their actual locations in space or by assigning a region in the signing space to a non-present referent and by pointing to this region to refer to it [@rathmann2011featural;@schembri2018indicating]. Signers can also establish relations between referents grounded in signing space by using directional signs or embodying the referents using body shift or eye gaze [@dudis2004body;@liddell1998gesture]. diff --git a/src/references.bib b/src/references.bib index 67b5d5c3..95294614 100644 --- a/src/references.bib +++ b/src/references.bib @@ -4617,3 +4617,23 @@ @inproceedings{filhol-von-ascheberg-2024-software url = {https://aclanthology.org/2024.signlang-1.8}, year = {2024} } + +@inproceedings{gavrilescu-etal-2024-content, + title = "Content Questions in Sign Language {--} From theory to language description via corpus, experiments, and fieldwork", + author = "Gavrilescu, Robert and + Geraci, Carlo and + Mesch, Johanna", + editor = "Efthimiou, Eleni and + Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita and + Hanke, Thomas and + Hochgesang, Julie A. and + Mesch, Johanna and + Schulder, Marc", + booktitle = "Proceedings of the LREC-COLING 2024 11th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Evaluation of Sign Language Resources", + month = may, + year = "2024", + address = "Torino, Italia", + publisher = "ELRA and ICCL", + url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.signlang-1.9/", + pages = "86--94" +} From be245d8f9341c6caa87e917fff4f871c7f42f7b4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: AmitMY Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:43:56 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 2/4] Shorten gavrilescu line to single concise sentence (review feedback) --- src/index.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/src/index.md b/src/index.md index a087f365..0ada2b2f 100644 --- a/src/index.md +++ b/src/index.md @@ -121,7 +121,7 @@ Similarly to tone in spoken languages, the face and torso can convey additional Facial expressions can modify adjectives, adverbs, and verbs; a head shake can negate a phrase or sentence; eye direction can help indicate referents. @kimmelman-etal-2024-headshakes apply OpenFace to corpus data from Sign Language of the Netherlands, showing that the linguistic function of a headshake (lexical, morphological, or prosodic) systematically affects its phonetic properties such as amplitude and peak velocity. -Non-manual markers such as furrowed eyebrows further serve as primary cues for sentence type, for example distinguishing content questions from declaratives, and @gavrilescu-etal-2024-content compared corpus, elicitation, and fieldwork methods across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages to characterize the distribution of wh-signs and their associated non-manuals. +@gavrilescu-etal-2024-content compared corpus, elicitation, and fieldwork methods across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages to characterize the distribution of wh-signs and their non-manual markers. ###### Referencing {-} The signer can introduce referents in discourse either by pointing to their actual locations in space or by assigning a region in the signing space to a non-present referent and by pointing to this region to refer to it [@rathmann2011featural;@schembri2018indicating]. From 999767e0c8eaa200ab916dbe41c9a71982556e3a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: AmitMY Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:21:11 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 3/4] Move gavrilescu-etal entry to ELAN section (review feedback: experimental study, not 'what things are') --- src/index.md | 3 +-- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/src/index.md b/src/index.md index 0ada2b2f..435d716d 100644 --- a/src/index.md +++ b/src/index.md @@ -121,8 +121,6 @@ Similarly to tone in spoken languages, the face and torso can convey additional Facial expressions can modify adjectives, adverbs, and verbs; a head shake can negate a phrase or sentence; eye direction can help indicate referents. @kimmelman-etal-2024-headshakes apply OpenFace to corpus data from Sign Language of the Netherlands, showing that the linguistic function of a headshake (lexical, morphological, or prosodic) systematically affects its phonetic properties such as amplitude and peak velocity. -@gavrilescu-etal-2024-content compared corpus, elicitation, and fieldwork methods across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages to characterize the distribution of wh-signs and their non-manual markers. - ###### Referencing {-} The signer can introduce referents in discourse either by pointing to their actual locations in space or by assigning a region in the signing space to a non-present referent and by pointing to this region to refer to it [@rathmann2011featural;@schembri2018indicating]. Signers can also establish relations between referents grounded in signing space by using directional signs or embodying the referents using body shift or eye gaze [@dudis2004body;@liddell1998gesture]. @@ -1092,6 +1090,7 @@ PyMPI [@pympi-1.69] allows for simple python interaction with Elan files. @esselink-etal-2024-evaluating evaluated inter-annotator agreement for non-manual markers in Sign Language of the Netherlands using complementary event-based and frame-based approaches on ELAN annotations, reporting low Cohen's kappa scores on several tiers and proposing concrete revisions to the annotation guidelines. @kimmelman-etal-2024-nonmanual combine ELAN annotations with OpenFace-based head pose estimation to show that Balinese homesigners and their hearing interlocutors consistently mark polar questions with downward head pitch and other question types with upward pitch, demonstrating how computer vision tools can quantitatively support linguistic analysis of non-manual markers. @martinod-filhol-2024-formal performed a corpus-based AZee analysis of French Sign Language (LSF) and found that chin advancement, rather than eyebrow position, is the consistent marker of information requests, challenging the widely reported open- vs. closed-question eyebrow contrast. +@gavrilescu-etal-2024-content compared corpus, elicitation, and fieldwork methods across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages to characterize the distribution of wh-signs and their non-manual markers. ##### iLex [iLex](https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/ilex/) [@hanke2002ilex] is a tool for sign language lexicography and corpus analysis, From fab5f928542c4503d8c7b9740276400223fc1fa4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: AmitMY Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:00:47 +0000 Subject: [PATCH 4/4] Create new Linguistic Analysis section under Tasks for gavrilescu-etal (review feedback) --- src/index.md | 7 ++++++- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/src/index.md b/src/index.md index 435d716d..8e2014bb 100644 --- a/src/index.md +++ b/src/index.md @@ -1075,6 +1075,12 @@ Results on these datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art performance compared to p @malmberg-etal-2024-exploring train a VQ-VAE on pose-tracked Swedish Sign Language data to learn a codebook of motion primitives, comparing models trained on isolated signs, sentences, and a mixed set, and find that the sentence-trained model best reconstructs in-the-wild YouTube signing whose velocity profile is markedly faster than dictionary data. +### Linguistic Analysis + +This sub-area covers experimental studies of sign language structure that use computational tools (corpus mining, computer-vision-assisted measurement, statistical modelling) to characterize specific linguistic phenomena, rather than to introduce new SLP methods. + +@gavrilescu-etal-2024-content compared corpus, elicitation, and fieldwork methods across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages to characterize the distribution of wh-signs and their non-manual markers. + ## Annotation Tools ##### ELAN - EUDICO Linguistic Annotator @@ -1090,7 +1096,6 @@ PyMPI [@pympi-1.69] allows for simple python interaction with Elan files. @esselink-etal-2024-evaluating evaluated inter-annotator agreement for non-manual markers in Sign Language of the Netherlands using complementary event-based and frame-based approaches on ELAN annotations, reporting low Cohen's kappa scores on several tiers and proposing concrete revisions to the annotation guidelines. @kimmelman-etal-2024-nonmanual combine ELAN annotations with OpenFace-based head pose estimation to show that Balinese homesigners and their hearing interlocutors consistently mark polar questions with downward head pitch and other question types with upward pitch, demonstrating how computer vision tools can quantitatively support linguistic analysis of non-manual markers. @martinod-filhol-2024-formal performed a corpus-based AZee analysis of French Sign Language (LSF) and found that chin advancement, rather than eyebrow position, is the consistent marker of information requests, challenging the widely reported open- vs. closed-question eyebrow contrast. -@gavrilescu-etal-2024-content compared corpus, elicitation, and fieldwork methods across Greek, French, and Swedish Sign Languages to characterize the distribution of wh-signs and their non-manual markers. ##### iLex [iLex](https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/ilex/) [@hanke2002ilex] is a tool for sign language lexicography and corpus analysis,