Collaborative Research: Function and form in the 'what' family of signs in American Sign Language

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This collaborative project studies the relationship between usage and grammar in American Sign Language (ASL) in a relatively new genre: ASL videos posted to public spaces online. Understanding the contexts in which ASL signers tend to use particular signs is critical to the linguistic description of ASL and to the development of cognitive, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic theories of human language, more generally. In addition to this, evaluating the accessibility and availability of online videos requires that researchers understand and respect the expectations of privacy that the people who have posted them may have. Through systematic study of ASL usage in videos online, the project also formalizes a pipeline for the mentoring and increased participation of deaf and signing researchers in social science research.The goals for this project are 1) to contribute to understanding of ASL grammar through the study of ASL signing from a variety of individuals, 2) to establish a pipeline for transforming internet data into reproducible research, and 3) to increase the participation of deaf linguists in linguistic research on ASL. In the service of these goals, the project singles out one class of grammatical constructions involving ASL signs that can be translated as “what” in English (as in “What did you say?” or “That’s what they told me.”). A fundamental question is how signers use these different signs in ASL discourse: Do particular signs consistently appear with particular grammatical functions, such as forming a direct or indirect question, or is there variation in the use of these forms conditioned by the grammatical and social context? The project addresses this question by collecting and annotating a large sample of instances of these specific signs in context from a variety of ASL videos online. These videos are primarily from aggregate-type websites such as ASL news outlets, recordings of public lectures and messages, and commercial videos. At the same time, the project seeks to identify the best practices for working with online videos and making the resulting annotations accessible for future research. This involves making not only the resulting annotations available in a digital repository, but also contacting a subset of individuals who post videos online to survey their perception and interest in this endeavor. Finally, this is a deaf-led project; deaf Americans are the primary users of ASL, yet deaf people often experience systemic barriers to pursuing research careers. This project allows for collaboration between deaf and hearing researchers to study the linguistic structure of ASL, providing accessible environments for mentorship and research experience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.