Project description
Facial expressions and body movements in sign language
Communicating in sign languages requires hand gestures, body posture and facial expression. For instance, communicating the meaning of 'I don't know' in Sign Language of the Netherlands consists of producing the manual signs NOT.KNOW and I, while simultaneously producing a head shake and furrowing the eyebrows. The EU-funded NONMANUAL project will explore whether all sign languages use the same basic universal building blocks (non-manual movements), but in a unique way, by investigating the formal properties of non-manuals in different geographically, historically and socially diverse sign languages. NONMANUAL will use data from published naturalistic corpora of sign languages, computer vision for measuring the movement of non-manual articulators, and a statistical technique of functional data analysis for a quantitative comparison of dynamic non-manual contours.
Objective
Sign languages, in addition to using the hands, also use positions and movements of other articulators: the body, the head, the mouth, the eyebrows, the eyes and the eyelids, to convey lexical, grammatical, and prosodic information. This linguistic use of the nonmanual articulators is known as nonmanuals. Contrary to current assumptions in the field of sign linguistics, this project proposes the hypothesis that all sign languages use the same basic universal building blocks (nonmanual movements) but that each language is different in how it combines these building blocks both sequentially and simultaneously. Languages also differ in the regularity, frequency, and the alignment properties of the nonmanuals. In order to test this hypothesis, the project will investigate formal properties of nonmanuals in five geographically, historically, and socially diverse sign languages using data from published naturalistic corpora of the sign languages, Computer Vision for extracting measurements of the movement of nonmanual articulators, and a statistical technique of Functional Data Analysis for a quantitative comparison of dynamic nonmanual contours. This will result in the first quantitative formal typology of nonmanuals grounded in naturalistic corpus data. The novel methodology proposed in this project requires testing, adjustment, and development, which constitutes an important component of the project. The developed methodological pipeline will be a secondary output enabling large-scale reliable quantitative research on nonmanuals in future. Finally, the established typology of formal properties of nonmanuals in the five sign languages will serve as basis for a cross-modal comparison between nonmanuals and prosody/intonation in spoken languages in order to separate truly universal features of the human linguistic capacity from the effects of the visual vs. auditory modalities.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2021-STG
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5020 Bergen
Norway
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