Sign Language corpus analysis: Synchronisation of linguistic annotation and numerical data

This paper presents a study on synchronization of linguistic annotation and numerical data on a video corpus of French Sign Language. We detail the methodology and sketches out the potential observations that can be provided by such a kind of mixed annotation. The corpus is composed of three views: close-up, frontal and top. Some image processing has been performed on each video in order to provide global information on the movement of the signers. That consists of the size and position of a bounding box surrounding the signer. Linguists have studied this corpus and have provided annotations on iconic structures, such as “personal transfers” (role shifts). We used an annotation software, ANVIL, to synchronize linguistic annotation and numerical data. This new approach of annotation seems promising for automatic detection of linguistic phenomena, such as classification of the signs according to their size in the signing space, and detection of some iconic structures. Our first results must be consolidated and extended on the whole corpus. The next step will consist of designing automatic processes in order to assist SL annotation.