Detecting Reduplication in Videos of American Sign Language

Zoya Gavrilov, Stan Sclaroff, Carol Neidle, Sven Dickinson


Abstract
A framework is proposed for the detection of reduplication in digital videos of American Sign Language (ASL). In ASL, reduplication is used for a variety of linguistic purposes, including overt marking of plurality on nouns, aspectual inflection on verbs, and nominalization of verbal forms. Reduplication involves the repetition, often partial, of the articulation of a sign. In this paper, the apriori algorithm for mining frequent patterns in data streams is adapted for finding reduplication in videos of ASL. The proposed algorithm can account for varying weights on items in the apriori algorithm's input sequence. In addition, the apriori algorithm is extended to allow for inexact matching of similar hand motion subsequences and to provide robustness to noise. The formulation is evaluated on 105 lexical signs produced by two native signers. To demonstrate the formulation, overall hand motion direction and magnitude are considered; however, the formulation should be amenable to combining these features with others, such as hand shape, orientation, and place of articulation.
Anthology ID:
L12-1057
Volume:
Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12)
Month:
May
Year:
2012
Address:
Istanbul, Turkey
Editors:
Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Thierry Declerck, Mehmet Uğur Doğan, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odijk, Stelios Piperidis
Venue:
LREC
SIG:
Publisher:
European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Note:
Pages:
3767–3773
Language:
URL:
http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2012/pdf/199_Paper.pdf
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Zoya Gavrilov, Stan Sclaroff, Carol Neidle, and Sven Dickinson. 2012. Detecting Reduplication in Videos of American Sign Language. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12), pages 3767–3773, Istanbul, Turkey. European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
Detecting Reduplication in Videos of American Sign Language (Gavrilov et al., LREC 2012)
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PDF:
http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2012/pdf/199_Paper.pdf