1887
image of Italian Sign Language
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

This paper presents a protocol for annotating Italian Sign Language (LIS) that merges cognitive and socio-semiotic principles with the technical demands of sign language processing for automatic sign recognition. The protocol is applied to a preliminary LIS dataset and integrates insights from both formalist and functionalist frameworks in sign language processing, aiming to leverage their respective strengths to create a comprehensive and accessible documentation of LIS. Unlike traditional gloss translations, which often introduce ambiguity by not directly associating signs with their meanings and relying on verbal language categories, the proposed annotation model incorporates a multi-layered approach that includes vocal language labels in written Italian and English, information on the Unit of Meaning performed combined with the implementation Typannot, a language-specific system sign languages annotation. This hybrid approach ensures that the annotated data is both human- and computer-readable, enhancing accessibility for both signers and non-signers. The presented multi-layered annotation model not only mitigates ambiguity but also provides a richer, more precise annotation. Initial findings suggest that this protocol can enhance the clarity and usability of annotated data, positioning it as a valuable resource for both linguistic research and technological applications.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/sll.24004.cal
2025-12-19
2026-01-24
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Almasoud, Ameera M. & Hend S. Al-Khalifa
    2011 A proposed semantic machine translation system for translating Arabic text to Arabic Sign Language. Proceedings of the Second Kuwait Conference on e-services and e-systems, –. 10.1145/2107556.2107579
    https://doi.org/10.1145/2107556.2107579 [Google Scholar]
  2. Antinoro Pizzuto, Elena, Paolo Rossini & Tommaso Russo
    2006 Representing signed languages in written form: questions that need to be posed. 2nd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages (LREC2006), –.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Antinoro Pizzuto, Elena, Isabella Chiari & Paolo Rossini
    2008 The representation issue and its multifaceted aspects in constructing sign language corpora: questions, answers, further problems. 3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Construction and Exploitation of Sign Language Corpora, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. 2010 Representing signed languages: theoretical, methodological and practical issues. InMassimo Pettorino, Antonella Giannini, Isabela Chiari & Francesca Maria Dovetto (eds.), Spoken communication, –. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bates, Elisabeth, Donna Thal & Brian MacWhinney
    1991 A functionalist approach to language and its implications for assessment and intervention. InTanya M. Gallagher (ed.), Pragmatics of language, –. Berlin: Springer. 10.1007/978‑1‑4899‑7156‑2_5
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7156-2_5 [Google Scholar]
  6. Bébian, Roch-Ambroise Auguste
    1825Mimographie, ou essai d’écriture mimique propre a régulariser le langage des Sourds-Muets. Paris: Chez Louis Colas.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Bianchini, Claudia S.
    2012Analyse métalinguistique de l’émergence d’un système d’écriture des langues des signes: SignWriting et son application à la langue des signes italienne (LIS). Paris, France: University of Paris 8 PhD dissertation.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. 2020 How to improve metalinguistic awareness by writing a language without writing: sign languages and SignWriting. Grapholinguistics in the 21st century, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. 2023(D)écrire les langues des signes. Approche grapholinguistique des langues des signes. Brest: Fluxus.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Bianchini, Claudia S., Dominique Boutet, Adrien Contesse, Claire Danet, Patrick Doan, Thimothée Goguely & Morgane Rébulard
    2017 Écrire les langues des signes: inscription et transcription. 8ème Colloque “Printemps de la typographie 2017: supporter l’écriture”, école Estienne, March 2017, Paris 2, France.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Boutet, Dominique
    2018Pour une approche kinésiologique de la gestualité synthèse. Rouen, France: Université de Rouen-Normandie Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Boutet, Dominique, Claudia S. Bianchini, Patrick Doan, Thimothée Goguely, Morgane Rébulard & Claire Danet
    2016 Typannot: a glyphic system for the transcription of handshapes. 7th Conference of the International Society of Gestures Studies “Gesture-Creativity-Multimodality”, July 2016, Paris, France.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Caligiore, Gaia
    2024Codifying the body: exploring the cognitive and socio-semiotic framework in building a multimodal Italian sign language (LIS) dataset. Catania, Italy: University of Catania PhD dissertation.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Cardinaletti, Anna
    2016 Il progetto SpreadTheSign. Blityri. Studi di storia delle idee sui segni e le lingue, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Cascella, Marco, Michael Rajnik, Abdul Aleem, Scott C. Dulebohn & Raffaella Di Napoli
    2023Features, evaluation, and treatment of Coronavirus (COVID-19). Treasure Island: StatPearls.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Chesi, Cristiano & Carlo Geraci
    2009 Segni al computer. Manuale di documentazione della lingua italiana dei segni e alcune applicazioni computazionali (2010 Edition). Siena: Cantagalli.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Cormier, Kearsy, Onno Crasborn & Richard Bank
    2016 Digging into signs: emerging annotation standards for sign language corpora. 7th Workshop on Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Corpus Mining, –. Portorož, Slovenia.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Crasborn, Onno, Richard Bank & Kearsy Cormier
    2015Digging into signs: towards a gloss annotation standard for sign language corpora. https://bslcorpusproject.org/wpcontent/uploads/Digging_into_Signs_draft_annotation_standard_Feb2015_forweb.pdf (AccessedJune 10th, 2024).
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Crasborn, Onno, Johanna Mesch, Dafydd Waters, Annika Nonhebel, Els van der Kooij, Bencie Woll & Brita Bergman
    2007 Sharing sign language data online: experiences from the ECHO project. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics(). –. 10.1075/ijcl.12.4.06cra
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.12.4.06cra [Google Scholar]
  20. Crasborn, Onno & Inge Zwitserlood
    2008 The Corpus NGT: an online corpus for professionals and laymen. 3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Cuxac, Christian
    2000 La langue des signes française (LSF) — Les voies de l’iconicité. Collection Faits de Langues(). –.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Cuxac, Cristian & Elena Antinoro Pizzuto
    2010 Émergence, norme et variation dans les langues des signes: vers une redéfinition notionnelle. Langage et Société. –. 10.3917/ls.131.0037
    https://doi.org/10.3917/ls.131.0037 [Google Scholar]
  23. Cuxac, Cristian & Marie Anne Sallandre
    2002 Iconicity in sign language: a theoretical and methodological point of view. Lecture notes in computer science (LNCS), –. Berlin: Springer.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Cuxac, Christian & Marie Anne Sallandre
    2007 Iconicity and arbitrariness in French Sign Language: highly iconic structures, degenerated iconicity and diagrammatic iconicity. Empirical Approaches to Language Typology(). –.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Danet, Claire, Thomas Chloé, Adrien Contesse, Morgane Rébulard, Claudia S. Bianchini, Lea Chevrefils & Patrick Doan
    2022 Applying the transcription system Typannot to mouth gestures. Representation and processing of sign languages: multilingual sign language resources, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. de Almeida Freitas, Fernando, Sarajane M. Peres, Otavio de Paula Albuquerque & Marcelo Fantinato
    2023 Leveraging sign language processing with formal SignWriting and deep learning architectures. Brazilian Conference on Intelligent Systems, –. Berlin: Springer. 10.1007/978‑3‑031‑45392‑2_20
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45392-2_20 [Google Scholar]
  27. Di Renzo, Alessio, Luca Lamano, Tommaso Lucioli, Barbara Pennacchi, Gabriele Gianfreda, Giulia Pettina, Claudia S. Bianchini, Paolo Rossini & Elena Antinoro Pizzuto
    2011Scrivere la LIS con il SignWriting. manuale introduttivo. Adattamento alla LIS del manuale di Valerie Sutton “Lessons in SignWriting”. Roma: ISTC-CNR.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Doan, Patrick, Dominique Boutet, Adrien Contesse, Claudia S. Bianchini, Claire Danet, Morgane Rébulard, Jean-François Dauphin, Lea Chevrefils, Chloé Thomas & Mathieu Reguer
    2019 Handling sign language handshapes annotation with the typannot typefont. CogniTextes. –. 10.4000/cognitextes.1401
    https://doi.org/10.4000/cognitextes.1401 [Google Scholar]
  29. Duranti, Alessandro
    2007Etnopragmatica. La forza nel parlare. Roma: Carocci.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Fontana, Sabina
    2008 Mouth actions as gesture in sign language. Gesture(). –. 10.1075/gest.8.1.08fon
    https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.8.1.08fon [Google Scholar]
  31. 2014 Traduzione e traducibilità tra lingue dei segni e lingue vocali. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio. –.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Fontana, Sabina & Gaia Caligiore
    2021 Italian Sign Language (LIS) and natural language processing: an overview. InPier Paolo Basile, Valerio Basile, Danilo Croce & Elena Cabrio (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Natural Language for Artificial Intelligence (NL4AI 2020), co-located with the 19th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AIIA 2020).
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Fontana, Sabina & Erika Raniolo
    2015 Interazioni tra oralità e unità segniche: uno studio sulle labializzazioni nella lingua dei segni italiana (LIS). InG. Schneider, M. Janner & B. Élie (eds.), Proceedings of the VII dies romanicus turicensis, –. Bern: Peter Lang.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Fontana, Sabina, Elena Tomasuolo & Gabriele Gianfreda
    2022 Naming in two modalities: manual and mouth gestures in hearing and deaf children. International Journal of Linguistics(). –. 10.5296/ijl.v14i4.20035
    https://doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v14i4.20035 [Google Scholar]
  35. Garcia, Brigitte
    2010Sourds, surdité, langue(s) des signes et épistémiologie des sciences du langage: problématiques de la scripturisation et modélisation des bas niveaux en Langue des Signe Française (LSF). Paris, France: University of Paris 8 Habilitation à diriger des recherches.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Geraci, Carlo, Katia Battaglia, Anna Cardinaletti, Carlo Cecchetto, Caterina Donati, Serena Giudice & Emiliano Mereghetti
    2011 The LIS corpus project. Sign Language Studies(). –. 10.1353/sls.2011.0011
    https://doi.org/10.1353/sls.2011.0011 [Google Scholar]
  37. Grushkin, Donald A.
    2017 Writing signed languages: what for? What form?American Annals of the Deaf(). –. 10.1353/aad.2017.0001
    https://doi.org/10.1353/aad.2017.0001 [Google Scholar]
  38. Hanke, Thomas
    2004 HamNoSys — Representing sign language data in language resources and language processing contexts. 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Hanke, Thomas, Marc Schulder, Reiner Konrad & Elena Jahn
    2020 Extending the public DGS corpus in size and depth. 9th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Sign language resources in the service of the language community, technological challenges and application perspectives, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Hanke, Thomas & Jakob Storz
    2008 iLex — A database tool for integrating sign language corpus linguistics and sign language lexicography. Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Construction and exploitation of sign language corpora (LREC 2008), –.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Hodge, Gabrielle & Onno Crasborn
    2022 Good practices in annotation. InJordan Fenlon & Julie A. Hochgesang (eds.), Signed language corpora, –. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. 10.2307/j.ctv2rcnfhc.8
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2rcnfhc.8 [Google Scholar]
  42. Jiang, Zifan, Amit Moryossef, Mathias Müller & Sarah Ebling
    2023 Machine translation between spoken languages and signed languages represented in SignWriting. InFindings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EACL 2023, –, Dubrovnik, Croatia. Association for Computational Linguistics. 10.18653/v1/2023.findings‑eacl.127
    https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.findings-eacl.127 [Google Scholar]
  43. Johnston, Trevor
    2008 Corpus linguistics and signed languages: no lemmata, no corpus. InOnno Crasborn, Thomas Hanke, Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd, Inge Zwitserlood & Eleni Efthimiou (eds.), Construction and exploitation of sign language corpora. Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. 2010 From archive to corpus. Transcription and annotation in the creation of signed language corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics(). –. 10.1075/ijcl.15.1.05joh
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.15.1.05joh [Google Scholar]
  45. 2019Auslan corpus annotation guidelines (August 2019 version).
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Johnston, Trevor, Jane van Roekel & Adam Schembri
    2015 On the conventionalization of mouth actions in Australian Sign Language. Language and Speech(). –.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Kendon, Adam
    2004Gesture: visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511807572
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807572 [Google Scholar]
  48. Kipp, Michael
    2001 ANVIL. A generic annotation tool for multimodal dialogue. Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (Eurospeech), –. 10.21437/Eurospeech.2001‑354
    https://doi.org/10.21437/Eurospeech.2001-354 [Google Scholar]
  49. 2012 Multimedia annotation, querying, and analysis in Anvil. Multimedia information extraction, –. 10.1002/9781118219546.ch21
    https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118219546.ch21 [Google Scholar]
  50. Klima, Edward S. & Ursula Bellugi
    1979The signs of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Kopf, Maria, Marc Schulder, Thomas Hanke & Sam Bigeard
    2022Specification for the harmonization of sign language annotations. https://www.project-easier.eu/wpcontent/uploads/sites/67/2022/02/EASIER_D6_2_Specification_for_the_harmonization_of_SL_annotations.pdf (AccessedJune 7th, 2024).
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson
    1980Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Lo Re, Luca
    2022Corpus multimodale dell’Italiano parlato: basi metodologiche per la creazione di un prototipo. Florence, Italy: University of Florence PhD dissertation.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. Matsumoto, Tadahiro, Mihoko Kato & Takashi Ikeda
    2008 Jspad: a sign language writing tool using SignWriting. Proceedings of the 3rd International Universal Communication Symposium, –. 10.1145/1667780.1667855
    https://doi.org/10.1145/1667780.1667855 [Google Scholar]
  55. McElvenny, James
    2019Form and formalism in linguistics. Berlin: Language Science Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Mesch, Johanna
    2012 Swedish Sign Language Corpus. Deaf Studies Digital Journal.
    [Google Scholar]
  57. Mesch, Johanna & Lars Wallin
    2015 Gloss annotations in the Swedish Sign Language corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. –. 10.1075/ijcl.20.1.05mes
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.20.1.05mes [Google Scholar]
  58. McNeill, David
    2005Gesture and thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 10.7208/chicago/9780226514642.001.0001
    https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226514642.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  59. Moryossef, Amit, Zifan Jiang, Mathias Müller, Sarah Ebling & Yoav Goldberg
    2023 Linguistically motivated sign language segmentation. InFindings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023, –, Singapore. Association for Computational Linguistics. 10.18653/v1/2023.findings‑emnlp.846
    https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.findings-emnlp.846 [Google Scholar]
  60. Neidle, Carol & Christian Vogler
    2012 A new web interface to facilitate access to corpora: development of the ASLLRP data access interface. 5th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: interactions between corpus and lexicon, –.
    [Google Scholar]
  61. Nonhebel, Annika, Onno Crasborn & Els van der Kooij
    2004Sign language transcription conventions for the ECHO project. Version 9. https://repository.ubn.ru.nl/bitstream/handle/2066/57889/57889.pdf (AccessedJune 7th, 2024).
    [Google Scholar]
  62. Peters, Cynthia L.
    2000Deaf American literature from carnival to the canon. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  63. Petitta, Giulia, Alessio Di Renzo, Isabella Chiari & Paolo Rossini
    2013 Sign language representation: new approaches to the study of Italian Sign Language (LIS). InLaurence Meurant, Aurélie Sinte, Mieke Van Herreweghe & Myriam Vermeerbergen (eds.), Sign language research, uses and practices: Crossing the views on theoretical and applied sign language linguistics, –. Berlin & Nijmegen: De Gruyter Mouton & Ishara Press. 10.1515/9781614511472.137
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614511472.137 [Google Scholar]
  64. Prillwitz, Siegmund
    1989HamNoSys. Version 2.0. Hamburg notation system for sign languages: an introductory guide. Hamburg: Signum Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  65. Raniolo, Erika & Gaia Caligiore
    2023 Comunicazione tra sordi e udenti in ambito medico: sfide e opportunità per un’assistenza sanitaria inclusiva. Poster presentation at5° Convegno Nazionale LIS. “La Lingua dei Segni Italiana: patrimonio culturale o capitale umano?”. Rende: University of Calabria.
  66. Riccardo, Flavia, Marco Ajelli, Xanthi D. Andrianou, Antonino Bella, Martina Del Manso, Massimo Fabiani, Stefania Bellino, Stefano Boros, Alberto Mateo Urdiales, Valentina Marziano, Maria Cristina Rota, Antonietta Filia, Fortunato D’Ancona, Andrea Siddu, Ornella Punzo, Filippo Trentini, Giorgio Guzzetta, Piero Poletti, Paola Stefanelli, Maria Rita Castrucci, Alessandro Ciervo, Corrado Di Benedetto, Marco Tallon, Andrea Piccioli, Silvio Brusaferro, Giovanni Rezza, Stefano Merler & Patrizio Pezzotti
    2020 Epidemiological characteristics of COVID-19 cases and estimates of the reproductive numbers 1 month into the epidemic, Italy, 28 January to 31 March 2020. Eurosurveillance(). 10.2807/1560‑7917.ES.2020.25.49.2000790
    https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.49.2000790 [Google Scholar]
  67. Romeo, Orazio
    1991Dizionario dei segni. La lingua dei segni in 1400 immagini. Bologna: Zanichelli.
    [Google Scholar]
  68. Russo Cardona, Tommaso
    2004La mappa poggiata sull’isola. Iconicità e metafora nelle lingue dei segni e nelle lingue vocali. Rende: Centro editoriale e librario università degli studi della Calabria.
    [Google Scholar]
  69. Santoro, Mirko & Fabio Poletti
    2011 L’annotazione del corpus. InAnna Cardinaletti, Carlo Cecchetto & Caterina Donati (eds.), Grammatica, lessico e dimensioni di variazione della LIS, –. Milan: FrancoAngeli.
    [Google Scholar]
  70. Sallandre, Marie Anne & Brigitte Garcia
    2013 Epistemological issues in the semiological model for the annotation of sign languages. InLaurence Meurant, Aurélie Sinte, Mieke Van Herreweghe & Myriam Vermeerbergen (eds.), Sign language research, uses and practices: Crossing the views on theoretical and applied sign language linguistics, –. Berlin & Nijmegen: De Gruyter Mouton & Ishara Press. 10.1515/9781614511472.159
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614511472.159 [Google Scholar]
  71. Schembri, Adam & Kearsy Cormier
    2022 Signed language corpora: future directions. InJordan Fenlon & Julie A. Hochgesang (eds.), Signed language corpora, –. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. 10.2307/j.ctv2rcnfhc.12
    https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2rcnfhc.12 [Google Scholar]
  72. Schembri, Adam, Jordan Fenlon, Ramas Rentelis & Kearsy Cormier
    2014British Sign Language Corpus Project: a corpus of digital video data and annotations of British Sign Language 2008–2014 (2nd edition). London: University College London.
    [Google Scholar]
  73. 2017British Sign Language Corpus Project: a corpus of digital video data and annotations of British Sign Language 2008–2017 (3rd edition). London: University College London.
    [Google Scholar]
  74. Sevilla, Antonio F., Alberto D. Esteban & José Maria Lahoz-Bengoechea
    2023 Automatic SignWriting recognition: combining machine learning and expert knowledge to solve a novel problem. IEEE Access, –. 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3242203
    https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3242203 [Google Scholar]
  75. Sloetjes, Han
    2023ELAN-Linguistic annotator. https://www.mpi.nl/tools/elan/docs/manual/index.html (AccessedApril 4, 2024).
    [Google Scholar]
  76. Stokoe, William C.
    1960 Sign language structure: an outline of the visual communication systems of the American deaf. Studies in Linguistics Occasional Papers. Buffalo: University of Buffalo Press [Re-issued 2005, Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education(), –].
    [Google Scholar]
  77. Sutton, Valerie
    1981Lessons in SignWriting. Newport Beach, CA: The center for Sutton movement writing.
    [Google Scholar]
  78. Volterra, Virginia, Maria Roccaforte, Alessio Di Renzo & Sabina Fontana
    2022Italian Sign Language from a Cognitive and Socio-Semiotic Perspective: Implications for a General Language Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/sll.24004.cal
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/sll.24004.cal
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error