Constructed action (CA) is a phenomenon that is used in signed discourse to show the actions of a referent (cf. Cormier et al., 2015; for DGS, cf. Fischer and Kollien, 2010). To achieve this, the signer adopts the role of the referent. Most studies use retellings as their data base (e.g. Herrmann and Pendzich, 2018; Cormier et al., 2015). Consequently, there is less research on CA and its use in data that is not influenced by stimuli. Though there is a considerable number of studies on CA, the phenomenon is still not well understood. One possible way to understand this multifaceted phenomenon better is to analyse collocations in conversations. In spoken language lexicography concordance lines – also known as keyword in context (KWIC) – have proven to be a useful tool in the analysis of collocations. The data used in this study are Free conversations in the Public DGS Corpus. This paper explores the possibilities and limitations of concordance lines as a tool to analyse collocational behaviour of CA. It also presents preliminary results regarding CA and its collocates, which may be explored further in the future.

The Public DGS Corpus is published in two different formats, that is subtitled videos for lay persons and lemmatized and annotated transcripts and videos for experts. In addition, a draft version with the first set of preliminary entries of the DGS dictionary (DW-DGS) to be completed in 2023 is now online. The Public DGS Corpus and the DW-DGS are conceived of as stand-alone products, but are nevertheless closely interconnected to offer additional and complementary informative functions. In this paper we focus on linking the published products in order to provide users access to corpus and corpus-based dictionary in various, interrelated ways. We discuss which links are thought to be useful and what challenges the linking of the products poses. In addition we address the inclusion of links to other, older lexical resources (LSP dictionaries).

This paper presents SignHunter, a tool for collecting isolated signs, and discusses application possibilities. SignHunter is successfully used within the DGS-Korpus project to collect name signs for places and cities. The data adds to the content of a German Sign Language (DGS) – German dictionary which is currently being developed, as well as a freely accessible subset of the DGS Corpus, the Public DGS Corpus. We discuss reasons to complement a natural language corpus by eliciting concepts without context and present an application example of SignHunter.