Motion Capture Analysis of Verb and Adjective Types in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS)
Julia Krebs, Evguenia A. Malaia, Isabella Fessl, Hans-Peter Wiesinger, Dietmar Roehm, Ronnie Wilbur, Hermann Schwameder
Abstract
Across a number of sign languages, temporal and spatial characteristics of dominant hand articulation are used to express semantic and grammatical features. In this study of Austrian Sign Language (Österreichische Gebärdensprache, or ÖGS), motion capture data of four Deaf signers is used to quantitatively characterize the kinematic parameters of sign production in verbs and adjectives. We investigate (1) the difference in production between verbs involving a natural endpoint (telic verbs; e.g. arrive) and verbs lacking an endpoint (atelic verbs; e.g. analyze), and (2) adjective signs in intensified vs. non-intensified (plain) forms. Motion capture data analysis using linear-mixed effects models (LME) indicates that both the endpoint marking in verbs, as well as marking of intensification in adjectives, are expressed by movement modulation in ÖGS. While the semantic distinction between verb types (telic/atelic) is marked by higher peak velocity and shorter duration for telic signs compared to atelic ones, the grammatical distinction (intensification) in adjectives is expressed by longer duration for intensified compared to non-intensified adjectives. The observed individual differences of signers might be interpreted as personal signing style.- Anthology ID:
- 2024.lrec-main.1015
- Volume:
- Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)
- Month:
- May
- Year:
- 2024
- Address:
- Torino, Italia
- Editors:
- Nicoletta Calzolari, Min-Yen Kan, Veronique Hoste, Alessandro Lenci, Sakriani Sakti, Nianwen Xue
- Venues:
- LREC | COLING
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- ELRA and ICCL
- Note:
- Pages:
- 11619–11624
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1015
- DOI:
- Cite (ACL):
- Julia Krebs, Evguenia A. Malaia, Isabella Fessl, Hans-Peter Wiesinger, Dietmar Roehm, Ronnie Wilbur, and Hermann Schwameder. 2024. Motion Capture Analysis of Verb and Adjective Types in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 11619–11624, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL.
- Cite (Informal):
- Motion Capture Analysis of Verb and Adjective Types in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) (Krebs et al., LREC-COLING 2024)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/proper-vol2-ingestion/2024.lrec-main.1015.pdf