Figure 5 - uploaded by Mireille Vale
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6 shows two examples of signs that belong to a more informal register than their English main glosses.
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This thesis addresses the question whether signed definitions, made possible by advances in electronic lexicography, should be introduced to sign language dictionaries. The thesis comprises four interrelated studies investigating different aspects of this question through a user-focused case study of the Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Langua...
Citations
... Although look-up frequency studies for online dictionaries in spoken languages such as English, German and Danish (see: Bergenholtz & Johnson, 2005;Verlinde & Binon, 2010;Lew & Schryver, 2014;Koplening, Meyer & Müller-Spitzer, 2014;Müller-Spitzer, Wolfer & Koplening, 2015;De Schryver, Wolfer & Lew, 2019;) have made great progress in particular over the last 15 years, as far as is known, apart from the preliminary research on the New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Dictionary (Vale, 2015;Vale, 2017) there is no study on online sign language dictionaries carried out in this context in SL literature. Furthermore, there is no comprehensive study in literature on the usability of SL dictionaries (Kristoffersen & Troelsgård, 2012). ...
From the point of lexicography, the phenomenon of dictionary look-up frequencies can answer many critical questions on dictionary users’ needs and relationship between corpus data and look-up tendencies. Although there have been a number of studies on the theoretical and functional aspects of look-up frequencies in the field of spoken language to date, there remain relatively a few attempts to describe the characteristics of look-up behaviour in sign languages. This paper investigates the relationship between the frequency list of Turkish Sign Language Corpus and The Contemporary Turkish Sign Language look-up occurrences. By using an approach to the comparison of corpus data and log files, the results demonstrate that there is a very limited similarities between both of them and no positive relation for percentage of top ranked items. Moreover, this corpus-based lexicography study concludes that objective corpus based-frequency list is a comparatively poor predictor of the dictionary look-up frequency and this difference might be direct result of the morphological structure of words/signs in TİD (rather simultaneous realization) compared to Turkish (rather agglutinative morphology).
... First user study(Vale 2015(Vale , 2017) Log files (Google Analytics) Think aloud activity / interview with small number of users 5 Users Ongoing feedback and analysis Analytics for website + mobile apps Hotjar analysis / feedback tool suite Quick pop-up polls linked to an online action or page Heat maps Recordings Direct feedback via email and web form Analytics 2011 (July - Dec) 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 (Jan - Aug) original URL 16,358 36,357 40,108 43,416 57,623 60,073 55,234 new URL 8,888 41,025 51,547 mobile Android 6,246 6,713 7,927 9,772 mobile Apple 3,607 5,771 5,805 8,259 6,274 6 does a high number of users equal success? Not necessarily! ...
Presentation reports on methods and outcomes of user evaluation studies of the NZSL Online Dictionary
... Few sign language dictionaries contain information in the target language beyond video content demonstrating signs and usage examples (Kristoffersen and Troelsgård 2012).Although translation of textual information (about the dictionary and about the language) displayed in a video window is one way to add this (as in ODNZSL), a bigger step towards a monolingual dictionary would be the addition of definitions in sign language. Implementation of this requires research based on corpus data and native speaker consultation about senses and principles for forming folk definitions, as well as consideration of their potential benefit and usability for dictionary users (see Vale 2017). ...
... Kristoffersen and Troelsgård (2012) point out that there have been no major usability studies of sign language dictionaries. Vale (2015Vale ( , 2017 are examples of studies that investigate online user behavior. ...
Sign language dictionaries have been motivated by dual needs for language documentation and standardized learning resources, and both purposes have contributed to valorizing sign languages over the past 50 years. Concepts and techniques of sign language lexicography have progressed from compilations of captioned illustrations to contemporary multimedia, online dictionaries. This chapter introduces key features of signed lexicon, sketches historical development in sign language dictionaries, summarizes current developments of sign language corpora, and identifies future directions.
