Reproduce: Martinod & Filhol 2024 — Formal Representation of LSF Interrogation

[AmitMY]

Paper

Title: Formal Representation of Interrogation in French Sign Language
Authors: Emmanuella Martinod, Michael Filhol
Venue: SignLang 2024 (LREC-COLING 2024 workshop)
ACL Anthology: https://aclanthology.org/2024.signlang-1.26/

Summary

Formal corpus-based AZee analysis of interrogation in French Sign Language (LSF). Examined 12 Dicta-Sign LSF videos (~1h21m, 8 dyads) plus extra data, tagging 182 information-request occurrences. Tested the long-claimed open- vs closed-question eyebrow contrast and proposed a new formal AZee production rule.

Results / Conclusions

• Eyebrow contrast unsupported: CQ 70% raised vs 29% lowered; OQ 61% vs 38% — not categorically distinct.
• Invariant marker is chin advancement during the utterance plus a final hold.
• Yields a new merged AZee production rule "Information request"; a separate "Awaiting feedback" phenomenon (chin advancement after the utterance) flagged for future work.

Code & Data

• Dicta-Sign LSF corpus.
• No public code repository disclosed.

Suggested Reproduction

1. Obtain Dicta-Sign LSF videos and annotations.
2. Re-tag information-request occurrences with the same coding scheme.
3. Reproduce the eyebrow vs chin frequency tables and validate the "Information request" AZee rule.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{martinod-filhol-2024-formal,
    title = "Formal Representation of Interrogation in {F}rench {S}ign {L}anguage",
    author = "Martinod, Emmanuella  and
      Filhol, Michael",
    editor = "Efthimiou, Eleni  and
      Fotinea, Stavroula-Evita  and
      Hanke, Thomas  and
      Hochgesang, Julie A.  and
      Mesch, Johanna  and
      Schulder, Marc",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the LREC-COLING 2024 11th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Evaluation of Sign Language Resources",
    month = may,
    year = "2024",
    address = "Torino, Italia",
    publisher = "ELRA and ICCL",
    url = "https://aclanthology.org/2024.signlang-1.26/",
    pages = "235--243"
}