Online corpus of Russian Sign Language
The online Russian Sign Language Corpus has been created on the basis of the annotated corpus of RSL developed during the project “Corpus-Based Research on Morphosyntax and Vocabulary of the Russian Sign Language”, which was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (12-06-00231-a).
Although the current online corpus has certain limitations, such as the amount of the texts and signers or technical conditions of video recordings, we believe it can facilitate the access to Russian Sign Language for linguists. The texts of the corpus represent two different local variations of RSL – the “Siberian” and the “Moscow” one. This opens the opportunity to study not only the internal structure and function of RSL, but also its territorial variations. The online RSL corpus can also be used in teaching RSL.
Being one of the first RSL corpora in Russia and abroad, the current online corpus can serve as a starting point for the project on building the national RSL corpus.
Software
Several subsystems are implemented in the Corpus.
The main subsystems are:
- visualization subsystem, including developed:
- ELAN transcriptions parser;
- HTML5 videoplayer;
- transcription representation subsystem;
- data management subsystem;
- data retrieval subsystem.
Project team
Project leader: Svetlana Burkova, PhD (Philology), Associate Professor, Novosibirsk State Technical University
Elizaveta Filimonova, postgraduate student, Novosibirsk State Technical University (project participation: 2012–2014)
Vadim Kimmelman, postgraduate student, University of Amsterdam (project participation: 2012–2014)
Alexandr Pashkov, software engineer, Novosibirsk State Technical University (project participation: 2013–2014)
Olga Varinova, RSL interpreter, Institute of Social Rehabilitation of Novosibirsk State Technical University (project participation: 2012–2014)
Darja Borodulina, postgraduate student, Novosibirsk State Technical University (project participation: 2012)
Acknowledgments
We express our gratitude to all RSL signers who have participated in the project; our special thanks go to Svetlana Elfimova, Temir Bochkin and Sergey Petrin for their assistance in the collection and translation of the RSL materials.