First steps towards the documentation of signed discourse: the pilot project for the creation of the Catalan Sign Language corpus

Abstract

This article presents the creation process of the pilot project of the first reference corpus of Catalan Sign Language (LSC). A corpus of a particular language consists of a representative collection of language samples in a machine-readable format and aims to provide an overview of a linguistic domain, as it is a broad representation of the language and its varieties depending on the geographical area, register, age and different discourse situations. As a sign language project, the video collections contain synchronised annotations aligned with the recorded visual data. These data contribute to improving the grammatical and sociolinguistic descriptions of LSC, providing a solid basis for further analysis based on spontaneous and elicited data. Here we present the work done during the process of preparation of this project, both in terms of the methodology of data collection, recordings and materials used, as well as the annotation procedure carried out. This work constitutes the first step necessary for the creation of the reference corpus project of LSC.

Keywords : annotation, Catalan Sign Language (LSC), corpus, data collection, documentation, gestural-visual modality.