Describing sociolinguistic variation in verb directionality in British Sign Language: A corpus-based study

该项目的目的是利用在BSL语料库项目(BSLCP，2008-2011年)下收集的现有大型英国手语(或BSL，英国聋人社区的语言)视频数据集，并对其语法的一个独特方面进行基于语料库的调查。在BSLCP中，收集了来自英国8个地点的249名BSL原住民和准原住民的数据。这些数据代表了语言社区，包括男性和女性，父母失聪的聋人和父母听力正常的成年人，年轻和年老的手写者，来自工薪阶层和中产阶级背景的个人以及不同的种族群体。该项目的主要目的是利用收集到的数据来调查二语习得中趋向动词使用的变异和变化。像BSL中的Ask这样的趋向动词在与之相关的位置之间移动，例如询问的人和被询问的人。因为这些动词包含了指向的元素，所以它们是手语所特有的，但它们在日常对话中的使用方式并不被很好地理解。这个项目将使我们能够将指示动词的使用与社会因素联系起来，例如签名者的语言背景、年龄、地区或社会阶层，以便研究它们是如何变化的。了解像BSL这样的手语的变异是很重要的，因为他们有独特的社会语言环境。只有5%-10%的英国聋人社区从签约父母那里获得BSL作为他们的第一语言，大多数签名者从聋子学校的聋人同龄人或成年早期的朋友那里学习BSL。由于这种不同寻常的语言传播模式，再加上缺乏广泛使用的书写系统，教育中没有标准的BSL变体，以及与周围社区的口语广泛接触等因素，英国聋人社区的手语使用呈现出很大的差异。自20世纪80年代以来，BSL在电视上和各种社交场合中的使用越来越多，这意味着这种语言正在经历快速的变化。更好地理解BSL中的趋向动词以及它们的变异和变化，将导致改进的手语教学资源，将更准确地描述英国聋人社区内的一系列亚群如何使用这种语言。当前项目的另一个目标是将根据BSLCP(2008-2011)创建的这一视频数据集的一部分转化为集中的数据来源，用于正在进行的旨在了解聋人社区普遍的BSL和手语的研究工作。技术的进步使得这些手语数据的视频记录可以被赋予可以在线访问的语言注释。过去，在分析手语数据时，使用模拟视频材料和缺乏视频注释软件不能有效地获取原始材料。在BSLCP之后，第一个可用于手语研究的国家手语视频材料的国家网络集合现已可用(www.bslcorpusproject t.org)，目前的项目建议将该集合的一部分转化为可搜索的档案(即“语料库”)。一个更易搜索、更容易获得的第二语言语料库将使人们能够对第二语言的结构和使用进行更多的研究。这将反过来改善对BSL教师、手语翻译员和聋儿教育工作者的培训。此外，该项目还使将BSL与世界其他地方相关和无关的手语和口语进行比较的工作成为可能，并将导致对人类语言总体上的更好理解。

The aim of this project is to exploit an existing large video dataset of British Sign Language (or 'BSL', the language of the British deaf community), collected under the BSL Corpus Project (BSLCP, 2008-2011), and to conduct corpus-based investigations into a unique aspect of its grammar. In BSLCP, data were collected from 249 native and near-native deaf signers of BSL from 8 sites across the United Kingdom. The data are representative of the language community, including a mix of men and women, deaf adults with deaf parents and those with hearing parents, signers who are young and old, and individuals from working and middle class backgrounds as well as different ethnic groups. The primary aim of the project is to use the data collected to investigate variation and change in the use of directional verbs in BSL. Directional verbs like ASK in BSL move in the signing space between locations associated with, e.g. the person asking and the person being asked. Because these verbs incorporate an element of pointing within them, they are unique to sign languages, yet the way they are used in everyday conversation is not well understood. This project will enable us to relate the use of indicating verbs to social factors, such as a signer's language background, age, region or social class, in order to study how they vary. An understanding of variation in sign languages like BSL is important because of their unique sociolinguistic situations. Only 5-10% of the British deaf community acquires BSL as their first language from signing parents, with the majority of signers learning BSL from deaf peers in schools for deaf children or from friends in early adulthood. As a result of this unusual pattern of language transmission, together with other factors such as the lack of a widely-used writing system, no standard variety of BSL used in education, and extensive contact with the spoken language of the surrounding community, sign language use in the British deaf community exhibits a great deal of variation. Since the 1980s, the increasing use of BSL on television and in a wider variety of social situations means that the language is undergoing rapid change. The greater understanding of directional verbs in BSL as well as their variation and change which will result from this project will lead to improved sign language teaching resources that will more accurately describe how the language is used by a range of subgroups within the British deaf community. Another aim of the current project is to transform part of this video dataset created under BSLCP (2008-2011) into a centralised source of data for ongoing research efforts that aim to understand BSL and sign languages of deaf communities in general. Advances in technology have made it possible for these video recordings of sign language data to be given linguistic annotations which can be accessed on-line. In the past, the use of analogue video material and the lack of video annotation software did not allow for efficient access to source material when analysing sign language data. Following BSLCP, the first national web-based and publicly accessible collection of BSL video material that can be used for sign language research is now available (www.bslcorpusproject.org), and the current project proposes to transform part of this collection into a searchable archive (i.e. a 'corpus'). A more searchable, accessible BSL Corpus will enable more research on the structure and use of BSL. This will in turn bring about improvements to the training of BSL teachers, sign language interpreters and educators of deaf children. Furthermore, the project also makes possible work comparing BSL with related and unrelated sign and spoken languages elsewhere in the world, and will lead to an improved understanding of human language in general.