Summer School - “Sign Language Documentation” and “Analyzing Sign Language Data“
Two short summer courses related to sign language research and taught by signing instructors will be offered by Radboud University Summer School before SIGN10.
“Sign Language Documentation”, taught by one of our faculty members Julie A. Hochgesang with support from Onno Crasborn, is aimed at students who are just starting out working on sign language data. This short course will have three main aspects – data collection, data annotation (ELAN), and use of data.
This course is aimed at students who are in the beginning phases of working with sign language data.
In the past fifteen years, there have been many new technological developments that facilitate the documentation of sign language based on video recordings, whether for documentation or preservation purposes, or for the purpose of investigating specific linguistic research questions.
It will have three main components:
- data collection: how we define, record, and store our sign language data (including proper informed consent and ‘research data management’)
- data annotation: how we edit, transcribe, annotate, and enrich our data for further analysis in the ELAN software
- use of data: how we can reliably store and distribute our data as a lexical (dictionary) or text (corpus) database for continued work
The first aspect (recording) will be introduced and discussed elaborately, while the second (annotation) and third (exploitation) phases will be taught using hands-on exercises based on your own video recording or on sample video recordings of the instructors. The course will feature discussions about the practicalities and ethics of sign language documentation work, as well as an introduction to the aims and guidelines to database construction.
The course will be taught in international sign by a deaf instructor and one or more deaf or hearing teaching assistants. It is mainly targeted towards Master's and PhD students who wish to pursue research involving language documentation or linguistic analysis of smaller scale data collections, including both adult and child data. In order to participate in the course, you need not be totally fluent in international sign, but some experience with international interactions will be required.
Level of participant
- Advanced Bachelor
- Master
- PhD
The course is designed for
deaf or hearing signing students at MA or PhD level, who want to improve their skills in any of the aspects involved in sign language documentation. It will be a great hands-on experience taught by an inspiring young deaf academic, that will improve not only your knowledge and skills but also extend your network in the international deaf community.
“Analyzing Sign Language Data“, taught by Carl Börstell, is aimed at students and early career researchers who have already had some experience working with sign language data, but wish to learn new methods for working efficiently with their data in a systematic way – data extraction, data analysis, visualization.
This course is aimed at students and early career researchers who have already had some experience working with sign language data, but wish to learn new methods for working efficiently with their data in a systematic way.
For this course, we will have three main learning objectives:
- data extraction: how we can access data, manually and automatically, from a variety of sign language resources (e.g., video dictionaries, annotation files, corpus collections);
- data analysis: how we can process our extracted data (data wrangling) and apply further analyses, such as statistical tests;
- visualization: how we can output our processed data in a visual way, by presenting it in a graphical format such as statistical plots/graphs.
The course is mainly targeted towards PhD students and early career researchers who are familiar with sign language data in both raw and annotated formats, but wish to get familiar with the basics of programming and statistical methods for working with that data. There are no requirements on previous experience with programming, but those who already possess some basic programming skills would still be able to benefit from this course.
Practical exercises will be available on different levels of difficulty, allowing you to choose from exercises that fit your experience and proficiency. The course also encourages students to bring their own data and questions, which will enable you to work directly on solving problems and addressing research questions that you yourself have.
The course will be taught in international sign by a deaf instructor and one or more deaf or hearing teaching assistants.
In order to participate in the course, you need not be completely fluent in international sign, but fluency in a sign language and some experience with international interactions will be required.
Level of participant
- Master
- PhD
- Post-doc
The course is designed for
Signing students at MA or PhD level, as well as other early career researchers, who want to gain practical skills in the processing and analysis of sign language data.
The course is a hands-on experience that will not only provide you with practical skills but also extend your international research network.
For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://lingdept.wordpress.com/2020/02/05/radboud-university-summer-school-courses-for-sign-language-documentation-and-analyzing-sign-language-data-before-sign10-august-2020-in-nijmegen-netherlands/?fbclid=IwAR0UZ2Afm49tM5vdFIFyEoWGpzAww60CCSjBFXFMsBMaUGFjlU9IHsQZacY