@inproceedings{lepp-etal-2026-two,
    title = "Two-Handed Signs and Handedness: Phonological Implications for Sign Language Structure",
    author = "Lepp, Lisa  and
      De Sisto, Mirella  and
      Shterionov, Dimitar",
    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} 2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion",
    month = may,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Palma, Mallorca (Spain)",
    publisher = "ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-nlpsi/2026.signlang-1.29/",
    doi = "10.63317/3per9mf2462d",
    pages = "275--286",
    abstract = "Handedness {---}the use of one versus two hands in sign production{---} has traditionally been discussed in relation to dominance and symmetry conditions, yet it remains underrepresented in formal phonological models of sign languages. This paper argues that handedness constitutes a core phonological parameter that directly influences the structure and interaction of movement, handshape, location, and orientation. Building on hierarchical and dependency-based approaches, we propose an adapted phonological dependency model that explicitly integrates handedness in the representation of manual articulators. In one-handed signs, features are specified for a single active hand. In two-handed signs, feature distribution is constrained by symmetry and dominance conditions, which regulate whether the hands must share features or may differ in a structurally restricted way. This structural encoding accounts for variation phenomena such as weak add, weak prop, and weak drop as constrained adjustments within the phonological system. From a technical perspective, this refinement suggests more formal restrictiveness and empirical discriminability within the feature geometries, reduced representational ambiguity, and improved empirical testability across theoretical, corpus-based, and computational implementations, strengthening the interface between phonological theory and sign language technology."
}