Japanese Sign Language

Sign language is a visual language. Research into Sign language, including in related areas such as linguistics and engineering is lagging behind spoken language. One reason for this is the absence of a common database available to researchers from different areas. This paper defines how to words are selected for inclusion in the sign language database, how to select informants, what format the data are included in and how to record the data. Also, the database includes threedimensional behavioral data based on dialogue. The following explains the results.

This paper tackles a problem of analyzing the well-formedness of syllables in Japanese Sign Language (JSL). We formulate the problem as a classification problem that classifies syllables into wellformed or ill-formed. We build a data set that contains hand-coded syllables and their well-formedness. We define a finegrained feature set based on the handcoded syllables and train a logistic regression classifier on labeled syllables, expecting to find the discriminative features from the trained classifier. We also perform pseudo active learning to investigate the applicability of active learning in analyzing syllables. In the experiments, the best classifier with our combinatorial features achieved the accuracy of 87.0%. The pseudo active learning is also shown to be effective showing that it could reduce about 84% of training instances to achieve the accuracy of 82.0% when compared to the model without active learning.

本 研 究 は ，複 言 語 環 境 に お け る 家 庭 で の 日 本 語 教 育 に 焦 点 を 当 て ，保 護 者 が ど の よう な 戦 略 で 子 ど も に 日 本 語 を 教 え て い る か を 調 査 し た 。 2023 年 9 月 か ら 2024 年 2月 に か け て ， バ イ リ ン ガ ル 家 庭 の 保 護 者 89 名 を 対 象 に オ ン ラ イ ン ア ン ケ ー ト を 実施 し ，27 名 の 海 外 在 住 日 本 語 家 庭 を 含 む 国 際 家 庭 に 注 目 し た 。結 果 ，語 り か け や 読み 聞 か せ と い っ た 直 接 的 な 継 承 語 教 育 が 子 ど も の 言 語 発 達 に 重 要 で あ る こ と が 明 らか に な っ た 。 ま た ， 電 子 機 器 や 教 育 機 関 の 活 用 な ど の 間 接 的 ア プ ロ ー チ も 教 育 の 成功 に 寄 与 し て い る こ と が 確 認 さ れ た 。 さ ら に ， 家 庭 内 外 で の 日 本 語 使 用 の 機 会 提 供が ， 子 ど も に 日 本 語 へ の 愛 着 を 持 た せ ， 学 習 の 動 機 付 け と 教 育 の 成 功 に 大 き く 貢 献し て い る こ と が 明 ら か に な っ た 。 こ れ ら の 戦 略 は ， 外 国 語 と し て の 日 本 語 教 育 に も応 用 可 能 で あ る と 考 え ら れ ， 本 稿 で そ の 具 体 的 な 提 案 を 行 い た い 。

This study examines Japanese language education in multilingual family settings, focusing on how parents teach Japanese to their children. An online survey,
conducted between September 2023 and February 2024, involved 89 parents from bilingual families, including 27 Japanese parents from various parts of the world.
The findings revealed several key strategies for successful language education.
Direct parental involvement, such as verbal interaction and reading aloud, was crucial for fostering language development. Indirect approaches, including using electronic devices and educational institutions, also played a significant role.
Additionally, parents who created consistent opportunities for children to use
Japanese, at home and in external settings, reported better outcomes. Another critical factor was fostering an emotional attachment to the Japanese language through cultural elements like traditional stories and media, which helped maintain children’s motivation and engagement. These strategies contributed to the successful home-based education of Japanese and offered potential applications for teaching Japanese as a foreign language in broader educational contexts.

Some of non-manual signals (NMS's) are considered to be functioning as grammatical markers in JSL. To describe NMS's of Japanese Sign Language (JSL), we have developed a notational system that we named sIGNDEX Ver.2. We code NMS's which appear in 100 elicited utterances with this system. We analyze the data thus coded and find frequency of each NMS. Our analysis makes it clear what NMS's are frequently used in JSL. It also shows cases in which one NMS synchronizes with another NMS, and that occurrence of some NMS presupposes another. Our presentation discusses a series of the statistical operations and the findings.

This paper proposes new coordinate system suitable for denoting sign language motion. As the proposed coordinate system consists of polar coordinate systems whose origins are certain points of human body, postures shown on the system can be proportional for avatars with any possible shape and fit with existing subjective sign notation systems. This paper extracted coordinate origins from Japanese-Japanese Sign Language Dictionary via morphological analysis. Selected 85 points are successfully mapped on H-ANIM standard humanoid avatar.

Many researches proposed many types of Computer Aided Education (CAE) systems for Japanese Sign Language (JSL). However, foregoing CAE systems for JSL have the problems that they cannot give the differences between targets and answers, and way to revise. The authors propose an innovative CAE system for JSL, which gives users visual information to revise their mistakes utilizing Computer Graphics (CG) animation. This paper presents finger character learning system with visual feedback as a prototype system of the proposed CAE system for JSL, a method to recognize finger characters and a way to give the visual information to revise.

This paper briefly summarizes the history of research on Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). After describing what is known about the origins of TSL itself, it notes that research on TSL began quite late, with the first known article concerning TSL not appearing until the late 1950s (Li 1959). Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, collections of "Chinese Sign Language" and Signed Mandarin signs were prepared at schools for the deaf in various parts of Taiwan. The author's own research on TSL began in the mid-1970s with sign collecting and cataloguing, and progressed on through a number of linguistics papers on TSL non-manual signals, word order, compound formation, phonetics and phonology, and eyebrow raising. The first dissertation to be written on TSL was Smith 1989. By then other researchers had begun to look seriously at TSL, and the National Association of the Deaf of the Republic of China had sponsored two TSL textbooks (Smith & Ting 1979, 1984). In the late 1990s, the author participated in the Taipei City Government's project to develop TSL training materials for sign language interpreters. More recently a number of linguists have joined forces to examine TSL in depth, resulting in projects such as the publication of this special issue of Language and Linguistics. Suggestions for future work include studies of TSL discourse, the production of a comprehensive dictionary of TSL, the preparation of instructional materials at a more advanced level, and research into Deaf history in Taiwan: if those who know this history do not pass it on to the younger generation, it will be lost forever.

Before there was reading there was seeing. People navigate the world and probe life's meaning through visible language. Visible Language has been concerned with ideas that help define the unique role and properties of visual communication. A basic premise of the journal has been that visual design is a means of communication that must be defined and explored on its own terms. This journal is devoted to enhancing people's experience through the advancement of research and practice of visual communication.

This thesis investigates how the Japanese Sign Language (JSL) numeral system can be characterised with respect to aspects of the linguistic structure of JSL numerals at the phonological and morphological levels; to typological comparisons with other sign languages; and, finally, to sociolinguistic variation. Data for JSL were collected, using various elicitation games, from a total of 37 participants from the Kanto and Kansai regions of Japan. Data for other signed languages were taken from the Sign Language Typology Project, based at the University of Central Lancashire and also from various academic sources. The study examines the semantic motivation prevalent in JSL numerals due to influence from the writing system of Japan, Kanji. Three main historical developments affecting JSL numeral signs include increased reliance on Kanji-based representations, a decrease in forms motivated by visual iconicity, and increased standardisation of forms due to a reduction in school-based variants. The analysis makes reference to four groups of sign languages and aims to carry out a comparison of each group with JSL. Group 1 consists of the JSL language family and includes South Korean Sign Language (SKSL) and Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). Group 2 comprises Chinese Sign Language, which shares similarities with JSL by way of the Kanji writing system. Group 3 contains the following urban sign languages: British Sign Language, Czech Sign Language, Ugandan Sign Language, Greek Sign Language, Argentine Sign Language, Indo-Pakistani Sign Language, Indonesian Sign Language, and Turkish Sign Language. Finally, Group 4 includes village sign languages such as Alipur Sign Language, Chican Sign Language and Mardin Sign Language. A higher level of similarity is found across JSL, SKSL and TSL, and the findings suggest considerable borrowing between TSL, SKSL and JSL in the domain of numerals. iii Contents List of figures …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….vi List of tables ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..ix Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………………………..x List of sign language abbreviations ………………………………………………………………………….xiii Notational conventions…………………………………………………………………………………………………xiii

This article describes the types of signed names given and used by deaf users of Japanese Sign Language. Drawing from a dataset of 216 signed names, we identify and describe nine strategies for signed name formation. Notably, seven of these represent written Japanese surnames. We explain how language contact with written Japanese characters (kanji) and syllabograms (kana) gives rise to a distinctive set of naming strategies. We further discuss the culture of literacy in Japan that emphasizes the written forms of surnames and consider its influential role in Japanese deaf education when sustained contact between many deaf people made naming a central concern.

日本学術振興会 特別研究員(RPD), 東京学芸大学JSPS Research Fellow(RPD), Tokyo Gakugei University危機言語としての言語研究が国際的に行われるようになって以来，手話言語はその枠組みに入れられてきていなかった。2006年，国連の障害者の権利条約で，手話も言語であると定義され，その重要性が認知され，手話研究の重要性は高まっている。これと同時に，重度難聴者への補聴を可能とする人工内耳などの技術も高まっており，手話を第一言語として習得する者が減少してきている。本稿では，手話言語がどのように成り立ち，習得され，なぜ消滅の危機に陥るのかについて整理した。これまで，地域共有手話や，発展途上国の都市型手話など，より強い都市型手話の影響に晒され，手話言語間で，より優位な手話言語にシフトするという言語シフトについて議論がされてきた。日本で使われている手話言語には，聾学校で発生した都市型手話であり，第一言語として身につけて使われる日本手話と，日本語を第一言語として身につけた上で日本語を表示するために使われる代替手話としての日本語対応手話（手指日本語とも呼ばれる），およびそれらの混成が見られる。このうち本稿では，都市型手話として発展してきた日本手話の音声言語への言語シフトの問題をとりあげた。手話の類型を提示したのち，日本手話という都市型手話が，話者が周囲の優勢な音声言語である日本語を身につけることによって消滅の危機にさらされていることを主張した。Since the linguistic study of minority languages as endangered languages began in the 1990s, only scant attention has been paid to signed languages. In 2006, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the United Nations defined signed language as "language." During the same period, technology for deaf and hard-of-hearin...

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk membedah 5 komik strip karya Irfan Arifin yang bertema komik kampus. Masing-masing komik strip dianalisis dengan pisau analisis semiotika Charles Sanders Peirce yakni relasi Tryadic dengan teori trikotomi (R-O-I) yang terdiri dari Representament (Qualisign, Sinsign, Legisign), Object (Icon, Index, Symbol), dan Interpretant (Rhema, Dicent, Argument). Kesembilan jenis tanda dalam trikotomi ini fokus mengidentifikasi, mengurai, dan menemukan tanda, kemudian tanda ditafsirkan dan dimaknai melalui proses berpikir yang disebut semiosis. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa tanda-tanda yang dipasang oleh komikus dalam kelima komik strip yang diteliti ialah berupa gambar yang terdiri dari gaya bahasa tubuh, ekspresi wajah, benda-benda dan warna. Adapun tanda yang terkandung dalam teks ialah berupa kalimat seruan, ungkapan, pertanyaan, jawaban, dan bunyi huruf. Semua tanda yang telah ditafsirkan merujuk pada makna yang bersifat sindiran dan mengandung pesan e...

Being deaf does not mean the same thing everywhere in the world. The Japanese Federation of the Deaf has made a great amount of effort to understand what it means to be deaf in Japan but the definition is convoluted and heavily debated. In this essay I look at factors which separate Japanese deaf people from their country, each other, and other foreign deaf societies to determine why members of the deaf community so vehemently oppose each other"s definition of deafness. I conducted three interviews comparing the Japanese disability module of deafness to Iceland and the United States of America both of which share the same oral roots as Japan but have evolved into a modern cultural module. Finally I bring historical context to understand how the Japanese mentality has developed after the Second World War to make the possibility of adopting a cultural module of deafness in the near future unrealistic.

In this paper, we try to contribute to the design of future technologies used in science museums where there is no explicit, predetermined relationship regarding knowledge between Science Communicators (SCs) and visitors. We illustrate the practice of interaction between them, especially focusing on social encounter. Starting in October 2012, we conducted a field study at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Japan. Based on multimodal analysis, we examine various activities, focusing on how expert SCs communicate about science: how they begin interactions with visitors, how they maintain them, and how they conclude them.

Sign-language comprehension activates the auditory cortex in deaf subjects. It is not known whether this functional plasticity in the temporal cortex is age dependent. We conducted functional magnetic-resonance imaging in six deaf signers who lost their hearing before the age of 2 years, five deaf signers who were >5 years of age at the time of hearing loss and six signers with normal hearing. The task was sentence comprehension in Japanese sign language. The sign-comprehension tasks activated the planum temporale of both early- and late-deaf subjects, but not that of hearing signers. In early-deaf subjects, the middle superior temporal sulcus was more prominently activated than in late-deaf subjects. As the middle superior temporal sulcus is known to respond selectively to human voices, our findings suggest that this subregion of the auditory-association cortex, when deprived of its proper input, might make a functional shift from human voice processing to visual processing in a...

Children with deafblindness have impairments in both vision and hearing. However, owing to the low incidence of this disability, few programs have been implemented to address the unique learning needs of these infants and toddlers and the specific concerns of their families. The majority of such children have additional problems, such as physical disabilities and/or medical disorders. Thus, infants and toddlers with deafblindness and their families are in urgent need of a suitable support program. For development of the affective support program, we identified the parent's obstacles nurturing congenital deafblind infants and toddlers. Concretely, we conducted an interview survey to parents of infants and toddlers with deafblindness by reminiscing back to upbringing time. The survey revealed that such parents have difficulties related to the evaluation of their children's acuity of vision and hearing, communication with family members, and lack of information about nurturing infants and toddlers with deafblindness.

Upaya menggunakan tanda-tanda visual berangkat dari pemahaman bahwa bahasa visual memiliki karakteristik khas yang dapat menimbulkan efek ketertarikan para pengamatnya. Hal seperti ini terkadang sulit disampaikan dengan bahasa verbal semata. Dalam studi ini, penulis meneliti tanda-tanda visual yang sering ditemukan pada pusat perbelanjaan. Kehadiran sistem tanda di ruang publik tersebut akan dianalisis menggunakan semiotika. Semiotika yang dipilih sebagai kerangka teoretis adalah semiotika Charles Sanders Peirce. Dalam Semiotika Peirce, semiotika didasarkan pada logika, karena logika mempelajari bagaimana orang bernalar, sedangkan penalaran dilakukan melalui tanda-tanda. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah menggali arti dari sistem tanda yang terdapat pada pusat perbelanjaan melalui semiotika Peirce.

The book under review is the first in English to provide detailed information on the history and social fabric of the deaf community, deaf education, and signing in Japan. As such, it deserves high praise, but there are also serious drawbacks. Due to space limitations, I will concentrate on those. Nakamura claims that deaf persons in Japan do not share a culture of their own, but rather identify themselves as Japanese first and deaf second. She draws parallels between the deaf and such minorities as Japan-born Koreans and returnees from abroad exposed to other languages. Whether the comparison works or not, we need to recognize differences among deaf people: there are some who have acquired JSL naturally as a first language and learn Japanese as a second language later; at the other extreme are those who, not being exposed to a sign language early, must learn Japanese orally, and often incompletely, as a first language; some will later learn a form of Japanese signing, also incompletely, as signing is forbidden in most primary schools. The former group shares a language with a distinct grammar and a Deaf culture. The latter group may also share this language and culture to some extent. If there is a distinctive Japanese culture, we can also say that JSL users share a Japanese Deaf culture, for example, different norms for touching, politeness, and interrupting, which are often shared by deaf people in other countries. JSL grammar has many kinds of structures not found in spoken Japanese. Many deaf people hold this view; some groups, like D-Pro, radically promote it and raise the consciousness of deaf as well as hearing people. The Japanese Federation of the Deaf (JFD) holds an opposing view, although there seem to have been recent signs of rapprochement. JFD calls JSL any kind of signing, including signed Japanese, that is used by deaf people. While I understand the delicate political motives for this assimilationist position, I must side

Cultural identity is a construct from the literature on Minority Identity Development Theory. One^s cultural identity provides one means of understanding one's psychological relationship to cultural communities with which one has ties. A new paradigm has been presented for understanding deafness as a cultural difference rather than a medical pathology. To draw out one implication of this new paradigm, a theory is presented for how audiologically deaf people develop culturally Deaf identities. Four stages of cultural identity development are described. Culturally hearing refers to people who hold the dominant culture's attitudes and beliefs about deafness. Culturally marginal refers to people who experience shifting loyalties or profound confusion regarding their relationship to the Deaf and hearing worlds. Immersion identity refers ix to a radical or militant Deaf stance. Bicultural deaf people have integrated their Deaf pride in a balanced way into their full h\amanity. Different paths of development are outlined dependent on the circximstances surrounding the hearing loss An instrument, the Deaf Identity Development Scale (DIDS) is developed in both English and American Sign Language to measure Deaf cultural identity. The DIDS is administered to 161 subjects: 105 students from Gallaudet University and 56 members from an organization of late deafened adults. Support for the existence of the four distinct kinds of cultural identity is provided by acceptable reliability, interscale and item-to-scale correlations. Thirteen hypotheses pertaining to instrument construction and theory and test validity are tested. Test results are used to illuminate further the paths of deaf identity development. Suggestions for improvement in the DIDS are presented.

While the complexities of interpreting in constrained legal contexts such as trials may gradually be getting better understood by legal professionals, the particular difficulties of interpreting for the Deaf remain largely overlooked, and the recent involvement of citizen judges in Japan's justice system makes it even more important to raise awareness about this aspect of language disadvantage. This paper focuses on a key feature of Japanese Sign Language: the non-manual markers produced by facial and body movements that accompany hand and finger signs. Research shows such markers to be poorly understood by non-Deaf observers and indeed even sign language interpreters sometimes conflate them with gestures used by hearing people.

We began building a corpus of Japanese Sign Language (JSL) in April 2011. The purpose of this project was to increase awareness of sign language as a distinctive language in Japan. This corpus is beneficial not only to linguistic research but also to hearing-impaired and deaf individuals, as it helps them to recognize and respect their linguistic differences and communication styles. This is the first large-scale JSL corpus developed for both academic and public use. We collected data in three ways: interviews (for introductory purposes only), dialogues, and lexical elicitation. In this paper, we focus particularly on data collected during a dialogue to discuss the application of conversation analysis (CA) to signed dialogues and signed conversations. Our annotation scheme was designed not only to elucidate theoretical issues related to grammar and linguistics but also to clarify pragmatic and interactional phenomena related to the use of JSL.

We recorded data on deafblind people in Japan. In this filming project, we found that Japanese deafblind people use different communication methods, tactile Japanese sign language and finger braille, depending on their hearing ability and eyesight. Tactile sign language is normally used by those who were born deaf or lost their hearing at an early age and then lost their sight after acquiring a sign language. These people are known as deaf-based deafblind (D-deafblind). Finger braille is popular in Japan, but largely unknown elsewhere. It is normally used by those who were born blind or lost their sight at an early age and subsequently lost their hearing after learning how to produce speech using their throat and mouth. These people are known as blind-based deafblind (B-deafblind hereafter). This paper introduces our filming project; the ways of data collection, translation and annotation. In addition, we show our preliminary observations using our data sets to clarify the important...

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.-Nelson Mandela as a civil, human and linguistic right, particularly in educational settings. In the letter, Dr. Bobbie Beth Scoggins, president of the NAD, specifically requested that the 21st Congress formally reject resolutions passed at the 2nd International Congress on Education of the Deaf (2nd Congress) in Milan, Italy, commonly known as the 1880 Milan Conference, where sign language in educational settings was strongly prohibited. And third, in Japan, too, an important development was made to further promote the social status of Japanese Sign Language (JSL). The 58th National Conference for the Deaf was held in June 2010 in Shimane Prefecture, Japan, sponsored by the Japanese Federation of the Deaf (JFD). About 2,000 deaf people and concerned people participated in the conference across the country. The conference organized a national campaign to get the Japanese government involved in making a policy on deaf education, especially on the use of sign language. Although it has become common in Japan today to see Japanese sign language interpreters in conferences and on television, the Japanese Ministry of Education still does not recognize sign language as a valid form of educational communication in schools for deaf people in Japan. The purpose of this article is to develop a foundation of future research toward the recognition of signed language as a language in Japan. A particular focus will be put on the recognition of ASL as a foreign language equivalent in Japan in order to integrate ASL into a language teaching curriculum for hearing Japanese university students learning English in the same way as other foreign languages such as Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and so on. The 2010 Boston University Intensive Summer ASL Course will be described in Chapter 4.

A new city hospital in Hirakata, Osaka opened in 2014. In 2011, a small group of deaf citizens requested a much-needed service at the new hospital: on-site, full-time medical interpretation in Japanese Sign Language (JSL). The group sought to strengthen their position by aligning themselves with foreign residents in the city. The Hirakata Initiative for Medical Interpretation Services for Deaf People and Foreign Residents set out "to change the city to be friendly to every citizen with a secured and comfortable life … [and] to ensure easy access for the hearing impaired and foreign residents to medical care." Public forums were scheduled featuring doctors, professors, interpreters and other specialists to discuss the needs and future prospects of medical interpretation. Initially there were feelings of optimism that policies and services crafted locally would ultimately serve as a template for medical interpretation in other areas in Japan. Although the group disbanded before realizing their ultimate goals, their activities were still worthwhile and beneficial. By analyzing the achievements and failures of the initiative, important lessons can be learned for future deaf activism. This paper, through multimodal and autoethnographic techniques, explores how the pluralistic dynamic efforts of local grassroots organizations are often the most successful in improving cultural, linguistic and personal accessibility for deaf communities in Japan (Mori 2011).

Bahasa isyarat Jepang merupakan keluarga bahasa visual-spasial yang kompleks yang digunakan oleh komunitas tunarungu di Jepang, yang mana dalam pengaplikasian bahasanya menggunakan sistem tanda yang direpresentasikan sesuai dengan makna yang ingin disampaikan. Pada penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian deskriptif kualitatif dengan teknik observasi. Data penelitian diperoleh dari kumpulan kosakata bahasa isyarat Jepang nama prefektur dalam video Shuwa Kyoushitsu Hananoki Shin Shuwa Tango [Todofuken]. Sebagai alat analisis, digunakan teori semiotika segitiga makna oleh Charles Sanders Pierce (1986). Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa bahasa isyarat Jepang nama prefektur dapat diungkapkan dengan satu isyarat dan dua isyarat. Terdapat 30 data bahasa isyarat Jepang nama prefektur yang direpresentasikan dengan satu isyarat, dengan rincian: (1) jenis Iconic Sinsign, (2) jenis Dicent Sinsign, dan (3) jenis Argument; dan 20 data bahasa isyarat Jepang nama prefektur yang direpresen...

This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC-ND License at the time of publication, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover illustration: A group of young people using sign language in a discussion. Photo courtesy of Andries van Niekerk, National Institute for the Deaf, South Africa, . Andries van Niekerk is currently working on a Dictionary of South African Sign Language. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: "Brill". See and download: brill.com/ brill-typeface. isbn 978-90-04-37661-8 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-37663-2 (e-book)

During the past twenty years, interpreters have been an active force in broadcasting TV news in Japan. This article looks at how this mode of interpreting has taken root in Japan and then examines the constraints, requirements and challenges for the future. It first reviews how interpreting television news from English into Japanese is performed on regular news programs. Interpreting Japanese news programs into English is also discussed in light of the remarkable events of 2011. The two essential constraints in TV news interpreting are the short preparation time and the undefined audience. More often than not, prepared texts are not available and preparation time is extremely limited. Broadcast interpreters need to be flexible and to be equipped with not only linguistic ability but also with a broad knowledge of current affairs. They also need to be skilled at conveying the news using their voice as a tool. To convey the news accurately and intelligibly, broadcast interpreters need to constantly update not only their linguistic ability but also their background knowledge and announcer-grade speaking skills. As a result of the increased prominence broadcast interpreting as a profession has its own niche as part of news reporting in journalism.

This is a study of ambiguities and tensions that occur within the role of the bilingual/bicultural researcher in an ethnographic study. This manuscript presents an analysis of three instances from two interviews in a study on the acculturation of deaf students in deaf kindergarten classrooms in Japan and the US. This is an auto-ethnographic analysis of conflicts found in fluctuating between multiple roles: research assistant, interpreter, cultural mediator, and sociolinguistic consultant. In these examples my bicultural knowledge allowed me to identify “hidden” meanings overlooked by other members of the research team. However, my interpreter role at times made it awkward to contribute my insights to the research team. The findings of this study show that interpreters who are linguistically and culturally in-between the researchers and researched play a crucial but delicate role in cross-cultural studies. INTRODUCTION Removing our shoes at the edge of the tatami mat, our group of se...

We recorded data on deafblind people in Japan. In this filming project, we found that Japanese deafblind people use different communication methods, tactile Japanese sign language and finger braille, depending on their hearing ability and eyesight. Tactile sign language is normally used by those who were born deaf or lost their hearing at an early age and then lost their sight after acquiring a sign language. These people are known as deaf-based deafblind (D-deafblind). Finger braille is popular in Japan, but largely unknown elsewhere. It is normally used by those who were born blind or lost their sight at an early age and subsequently lost their hearing after learning how to produce speech using their throat and mouth. These people are known as blind-based deafblind (B-deafblind hereafter). This paper introduces our filming project; the ways of data collection, translation and annotation. In addition, we show our preliminary observations using our data sets to clarify the important...

We recorded data on deafblind people in Japan. In this filming project, we found that Japanese deafblind people use different communication methods, tactile Japanese sign language and finger braille, depending on their hearing ability and eyesight. Tactile sign language is normally used by those who were born deaf or lost their hearing at an early age and then lost their sight after acquiring a sign language. These people are known as deaf-based deafblind (D-deafblind). Finger braille is popular in Japan, but largely unknown elsewhere. It is normally used by those who were born blind or lost their sight at an early age and subsequently lost their hearing after learning how to produce speech using their throat and mouth. These people are known as blind-based deafblind (B-deafblind hereafter). This paper introduces our filming project; the ways of data collection, translation and annotation. In addition, we show our preliminary observations using our data sets to clarify the important...

This paper proposes a Japanese sign-language recognition system using acceleration sensors, position sensors and datagloves, to understand human dynamic motions and finger geometry. The sensor integration method realized a robust gesture recognition comparing with a single sensor method. The sign-language recognition is done by referring to a Japanese sign-language database in which words are written as sequences of the gesture primitives. Two recognition algorithms which are the automata algorithm and the HMM are introduced and tested in the practical experiments.

This paper proposes a Japanese sign-language recognition system using acceleration sensors, position sensors and datagloves, to understand human dynamic motions and finger geometry. The sensor integration method realized a robust gesture recognition comparing with a single sensor method. The sign-language recognition is done by referring to a Japanese sign-language database in which words are written as sequences of the gesture

The lecture is one of the most valuable genres of audiovisual data. Though spoken document processing is a promising technology for utilizing the lecture in various ways, it is difficult to evaluate because the evaluation require a subjective judgment and/or the verification of large quantities of evaluation data. In this paper, a test collection for the evaluation of spoken lecture retrieval is reported. The test collection consists of the target spoken documents of about 2,700 lectures (604 hours) taken from the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ), 39 retrieval queries, the relevant passages in the target documents for each query, and the automatic transcription of the target speech data. This paper also reports the retrieval performance targeting the constructed test collection by applying a standard spoken document retrieval (SDR) method, which serves as a baseline for the forthcoming SDR studies using the test collection.

The lecture is one of the most valuable genres of audiovisual data. Though spoken document processing is a promising technology for utilizing the lecture in various ways, it is difficult to evaluate because the evaluation require a subjective judgment and/or the verification of large quantities of evaluation data. In this paper, a test collection for the evaluation of spoken lecture retrieval is reported. The test collection consists of the target spoken documents of about 2,700 lectures (604 hours) taken from the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ), 39 retrieval queries, the relevant passages in the target documents for each query, and the automatic transcription of the target speech data. This paper also reports the retrieval performance targeting the constructed test collection by applying a standard spoken document retrieval (SDR) method, which serves as a baseline for the forthcoming SDR studies using the test collection.

A small group of interpreters was interviewed with regard to their view of learning ASL and becoming bicultural. A model of identity was then postulated based on Hegel's dialectic (Wheat 2012) of thesis (presuppositions, stereotypes, or theories about ASL and the Deaf community), antithesis (conflicting experiences), and synthesis (new understanding and acceptance). Also utilized were various identity constructs from the literature on bilingualism/biculturalism, which suggests that identity is ascribed or constructed in relation to others and constantly negotiated (Tropp et al. 1999). Evidence was found of a period of thesis or position, during which some interpreters had no presuppositions about Deaf people or ASL; some perhaps had a disability perspective. Next they went through a process of antithesis or opposition, during which they discovered the complexities of ASL and Deaf culture and values that conflict with their own. Here the participants described confronting the "hearing line" (Krentz 2007), society's negative view of Deaf people; some of them may have developed a sense of bilingual fatigue (McCartney 2006; Schwenke 2011; Watson 1987). Finally, the participants arrived at a level of synthesis or composition, during which they had a more complex and nuanced understanding of their identity in relation to the Deaf community. At this level, they viewed Deaf people as a positive foil to the hearing world; for them, Deaf people modeled a collective and egalitarian approach to others and stimulated reflection on the meaning of diversity and inclusion.

A small group of interpreters was interviewed with regard to their view of learning ASL and becoming bicultural. A model of identity was then postulated based on Hegel's dialectic (Wheat 2012) of thesis (presuppositions, stereotypes, or theories about ASL and the Deaf community), antithesis (conflicting experiences), and synthesis (new understanding and acceptance). Also utilized were various identity constructs from the literature on bilingualism/biculturalism, which suggests that identity is ascribed or constructed in relation to others and constantly negotiated (Tropp et al. 1999). Evidence was found of a period of thesis or position, during which some interpreters had no presuppositions about Deaf people or ASL; some perhaps had a disability perspective. Next they went through a process of antithesis or opposition, during which they discovered the complexities of ASL and Deaf culture and values that conflict with their own. Here the participants described confronting the "hearing line" (Krentz 2007), society's negative view of Deaf people; some of them may have developed a sense of bilingual fatigue (McCartney 2006; Schwenke 2011; Watson 1987). Finally, the participants arrived at a level of synthesis or composition, during which they had a more complex and nuanced understanding of their identity in relation to the Deaf community. At this level, they viewed Deaf people as a positive foil to the hearing world; for them, Deaf people modeled a collective and egalitarian approach to others and stimulated reflection on the meaning of diversity and inclusion.

ASL and Interpreter Education students are often told to "use context" to figure out fingerspelled words. While there is anecdotal evidence and pedagogical advice regarding the use of context to improve fingerspelling comprehension, there has never been a controlled study to test the effectiveness of context in decoding fingerspelled words. This paper reports recent research on whether an ASL student's ability to comprehend fingerspelled words increases if the words are viewed with context. The results of the study paralleled research that shows that novice readers of written English use context to decode unfamiliar words. Drawing on researchers' experience with novice readers, this paper introduces categories of contextual cues in ASL that can be utilized by novice signers when attempting to comprehend a fingerspelled word. The findings have strong pedagogical implications, and this paper offers innovative approaches for incorporating the teaching of contextual cu...

This paper proposes a gesture recognition method which uses higher order local autocorrelation HLAC features extracted from PARCOR images. To extract dominant information from a sequence of images, we apply linear prediction coding technique to the sequence of pixel values and PARCOR images are constructed from the PARCOR coe cients of the sequences of the pixel values. From the PARCOR images, HLAC features are e x t r acted and the sequences of the features are used as the input vectors of the Hidden Markov Model HMM based r ecognizer. Since H L A C f e atures are inherently shift-invariant and computationally inexpensive, the proposed method b ecomes robust to changes of shift of the person's position and makes real-time gesture recognition possible. Experimental results of gesture r ecognition are shown to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.

Clustering of the training data using K-means method improved the generalization ability of kernel-based Fisher discriminant analysis. In this study, Gaussian type kernel function was used. The proposed method is applied to the vision-based recognition of the 41 Japanese Sign Language (JSL) static hand postures, which express part of the Japanese syllabary. The reflective near-infrared light method was used with few burdens for a hand postures hand postures in which the outline were similar cannot be discriminated, or a hand had to be colored. In this study, the reflective near-infrared light method without a cumbersome glove-like device is applied to the recognition of the 41 JSL static hand postures. After preprocessing for the raw data, feature vector was extracted by K-means method and Gaussian type kernel function . For classification of 41 postures of 4 subjects, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was used. expressioner compared with the conventional methods. The image data obtained by this Manual Japanese Syllabary, method can cut a background and include the "Yubi-Moji" depth information of the hand as the intensities "Yubi-Moji" is an element of JSL and of image. expresses the Japanese kana syllabary and number with one hand. Figure shows the '~ddress: AIST Central 2,