Phonological Proximity in Costa Rican Sign Language

Abstract

The study of phonological proximity makes it possible to establish a basis for future decision-making in the treatment of sign languages. Knowing how close a set of signs are allows the interested party to decide more easily its study by clustering, as well as the teaching of the language to third parties based on similarities. In addition, it lays the foundation for strengthening disambiguation modules in automatic recognition systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind for Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO, for its Spanish acronym), and forms the basis for one of the modules of the already operational system of sign and speech editing called the International Platform for Sign Language Edition (PIELS). A database of 2665 signs, grouped into eight contexts, is used, and a comparison of similarity measures is made, using standard statistical formulas to measure their degree of correlation. This corpus will be especially useful in machine learning approaches. In this work, we have proposed an analysis of different similarity measures between signs in order to find out the phonological proximity between them. After analyzing the results obtained, we can conclude that LESCO is a sign language with high levels of phonological proximity, particularly in the orientation and location components, but they are noticeably lower in the form component. We have also concluded as an outstanding contribution of our research that automatic recognition systems can take as a basis for their first prototypes the contexts or sign domains that map to clusters with lower levels of similarity. As mentioned, the results obtained have multiple applications such as in the teaching area or the Natural Language Processing area for automatic recognition tasks.

Architecture design of a reinforcement environment for learning sign languages

“…As depicted in previous research (Naranjo-Zeledón et al, 2020), the results achieved by the cosine formula are based on mapping the phonological parameters of each sign to an array of numbers. These numbers are predefined and show different phonological characteristics of the signs like the hand orientation, the handshape, and the hand spatial location.…”

“…The results obtained in the evaluation of the phonological proximity module are deeply analyzed in our previous paper (Naranjo-Zeledón et al, 2020). In our database, we have already mapped each sign to a vector of 26 numerical parameters, each one with a precise phonological meaning.…”

“…A previous research (Naranjo-Zeledón et al, 2020) showed that phonological proximity upgrades different areas within the study of a Sign Language. In relation to this particular research, the fundamental characteristics of the Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO, for its acronym in Spanish) were disclosed regarding phonological proximity for clustering and learning reinforcement purposes.…”

Teacher wellbeing and retention: The impact of rapidly transforming learning and teaching with digital technologies

“…Chacón-Rivas (Naranjo-Zeledón et al, 2020) highlights the importance of technology in development and interaction processes, especially for deaf people, who often face social barriers due to a lack of awareness or information. For the author, technology is vital in education, and its inclusion has been more evident recently, with efforts to avoid the marginalization of vulnerable groups, such as the deaf community (Espinach, et al, 2021) In this text, we report an ongoing study that involved the creation of 60 signs in Libras, categorized into six groups, based on signs already present in PIELS, previously restricted to Costa Rican Sign Language (LESCO).…”

Dictionary of Computer Terms in LSA With Operational Signs Proposed by and for Hearing-Impaired Students

“…Diferentes enfoques se vienen utilizando para traducir texto a lenguaje de señas y viceversa, tales como técnicas de procesamiento de lenguaje natural, de aprendizaje automático, y también el uso de avatares para la visualización de las señas. Todos estos son tópicos de trabajo actual [28] [35] [36]. En el escenario educativo, el hecho de reconocer las particularidades lingüísticas y culturales de las personas con discapacidad auditiva conduce a plantear propuestas de educación bilingüebicultural [10] [38].…”