The Sign Language Linguistics department of Radboud University, in Nijmegen (The Netherlands), is organizing a Summer School on “Sign Language documentation”, from 10 to 14 August 2020.

This course is aimed at students who are in the beginning phases of working with sign language data.
In the past fifteen years, there have been many new technological developments that facilitate the documentation of sign language based on video recordings, whether for documentation or preservation purposes, or for the purpose of investigating specific linguistic research questions.
It will have three main components:
1. data collection: how we define, record, and store our sign language data (including proper informed consent and ‘research data management’)
2. data annotation: how we edit, transcribe, annotate, and enrich our data for further analysis in the ELAN software
3. use of data: how we can reliably store and distribute our data as a lexical (dictionary) or text (corpus) database for continued work

The first aspect (recording) will be introduced and discussed elaborately, while the second (annotation) and third (exploitation) phases will be taught using hands-on exercises based on your own video recording or on sample video recordings of the instructors. The course will feature discussions about the practicalities and ethics of sign language documentation work, as well as an introduction to the aims and guidelines to database construction.

The course will be taught in international sign by a deaf instructor and one or more deaf or hearing teaching assistants. It is mainly targeted towards Master’s and PhD students who wish to pursue research involving language documentation or linguistic analysis of smaller scale data collections, including both adult and child data. In order to participate in the course, you need not be totally fluent in international sign, but some experience with international interactions will be required.

The classes will be taught in International Sign by two researchers:
– Julie Hochgesang, Assistant professor, Linguistics, Gallaudet University (USA)
– Onno Crasborn, Professor Language & Communication, Radboud University

Please, find attached more information.
https://www.ru.nl/radboudsummerschool/courses/2020/sign-language-documentation/

Reminder: Earlybird registration fees until 1 March 2020