Back and Forth between Theory and Application: Shared Phonological Coding Between ASL S ignbank and ASL - LEX (2020)

Abstract: The development of signed language lexical databases, digital organizations that describe different phonological features of and attempt to establish relationships between signs has resulted in a renewed interest in the phonological descriptions used to uniquely identify and organize the lexicons of respective sign languages (van der Kooij, 2002; Fenlon et al., 2016; Brentari et al., 2018). Throughout the mutually shared coding process involved in organizing two lexical databases, ASL Signbank (Hochgesang, Crasborn and Lillo-Martin, 2020) and ASL-LEX (Caselli et al., 2016), issues have arisen that require revisiting how phonological features and categories are to be applied and even decided upon, and which would adequately distinguish lexical contrast for respective sign languages. The paper concludes by exploring the inverse of the theory-to-database relationship. Examples are given of theoretical implications and research questions that arise from consequences of language resource building. These are presented as evidence that not only does theory impact organization of databases but that the process of database creation can also inform our theories.

## asl signbank id 1109 as for the asl signbank, shared phonological descriptions appears to be a much more pervasive issue (e.g. entering in path movement within the sign search function leads to a result of 36 signs sharing a phonological transcription, many of which would be considered "false homonyms"). applying a feature-based system to lexical databases might seem counterintuitive if phonological relationships are determined based on a phonemic descriptive approach, but as corina (1990: 27) explains, "[i]n describing distinctive feature systems, one attempts to characterize the underlying perceptual and/or gestural components of phonemes in a [sign] language." for example, "a handshape representation consists of features for finger(s) involved in articulating the handshape and features describing the configuration [or flexion] of these fingers" (corina, 1990: 28).