Documentation, preservation, and analyses of Japanese Sign Language lexical system from the perspective of deaf communities

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25284075
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Tsukuba University of Technology
• Principal Investigator: OSUGI Yutaka 筑波技術大学, 障害者高等教育研究支援センター, 教授 (60451704)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): BONO Mayumi 国立情報学研究所, コンテンツ科学研究系, 准教授 (50418521) ; TAKEI Wataru 金沢大学, 学校教育系, 教授 (70322112) ; KIKUSAWA Ritsuko 国立民族学博物館, 先端人類科学研究部, 准教授 (90272616)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 日本手話 / コーパス / 語彙 / 会話分析 / 年代差

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The main outcomes of this research project were to develop the Japanese Sign Language corpus for both academic and public use in succession to the previous project, and to conduct linguistic analyses in the aspects of lexicon and conversation by using this corpus.
Specifically, we were able to collect sign language expressions from 62 deaf informants living in Nagasaki, Fukuoka, Ishikawa, and Toyama prefectures through the deaf associations in three ways: interviews (for introductory purposes only), lexical elicitation, and task-oriented dialogues. The detailed transcription generated from the corpus created an enabling environment for our analyses of the lexical sharing phenomenon and the turn-taking phenomenon in the Japanese Sign Language, which lead to expansion of the scope of comparative studies between signed and spoken languages.

Free Research Field

手話言語学　ろう者学