The Use of a FileMaker Pro Database in Evaluating Sign Language Notation Systems

In this paper, FileMaker Pro has been used to create a database in order to evaluate sign language notation systems used for representing hand configurations. The database cited in this paper focuses on child acquisition data, particularly the dataset of one child and one adult productions of the same American Sign Language (ASL) signs produced in a two-year span. The hand configurations in selected signs have been coded using Stokoe notation (Stokoe, Casterline & Croneberg, 1965), the Hamburg Notation System or HamNoSys (Prillwitz et al, 1989), the revised Prosodic Model Handshape Coding system or PM (Eccarius & Brentari, 2008) and Sign Language Phonetic Annotation or SLPA, a notation system that has grown from the Movement-Hold Model (Johnson & Liddell, 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2012). Data was pulled from ELAN transcripts, organized and notated in a FileMaker Pro database created to investigate the representativeness of each system. Representativeness refers to the ability of the notation system to represent the hand configurations in the dataset. This paper briefly describes the design of the FileMaker Pro database intended to provide both quantitative and qualitative information in order to allow the sign language researcher to examine the representativeness of sign language notation systems.