Making an Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language

Rachel Locker Mckee,David Mckee

doi:10.5788/23-1-1227

Abstract

The Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language (ODNZSL), launched in 2011, is an example of a contemporary sign language dictionary that leverages the 21st century advantages of a digital medium and an existing body of descriptive research on the language, including a small electronic corpus of New Zealand Sign Language. Innovations in recent online dictionaries of other signed languages informed development of this bilingual, bi-directional, multimedia dictionary. Video content and search capacities in an online medium are a huge advance in more directly representing a signed lexicon and enabling users to access content in versatile ways, yet do not resolve all of the theoretical challenges that face sign language dictionary makers. Considerations in the editing and production of the ODNZSL are discussed in this article, including issues of determining lexemes and word class in a polysynthetic language, deriving usage examples from a small corpus, and dealing with sociolinguistic variation in the selection and performance of content.Keywords: sign language lexicography, online dictionaries, multimedia dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, learner dictionaries, new zealand sign language, video content, sign language corpus, polysynthetic morphology, polysemy, sociolinguistic variation, sign language linguistics, user profile

Highlights

Capturing the lexis of a signed language in a bilingual dictionary requires macro and micro decisions about issues of lemmatisation, ordering, variants, grammar, sense and usage
This article describes how the electronic medium was leveraged in making an online dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language (McKee et al 2011)
Sign language corpora are being developed in numerous countries, the scale remains relatively small in comparison to spoken languages, due to the labour intensive nature of transcription and the small number of people who have the analytic skills to do this work.6. It does not provide direct user access to a corpus, the ODNZSL is one of few signed language dictionaries to have utilised an electronic corpus as the main source of usage examples

Summary

Introduction

Capturing the lexis of a signed language in a bilingual dictionary requires macro and micro decisions about issues of lemmatisation, ordering, variants, grammar, sense and usage. The aims, design and production of the dictionary (hereafter abbreviated as ODNZSL) are described, and some perennial issues for sign language dictionary makers are illustrated, including providing usage examples, determining word class and citation forms, and dealing with polysemy and mouthing.

Results

Conclusion