Signs and Synonymity: Continuing Development of the Multilingual Sign Language Wordnet

Abstract

The Multilingual Sign Language Wordnet is the first publicly available wordnet resource for sign languages. It is a growing multilingual resource providing data for eight sign languages to date. During the initial phase of its creation, the focus lay on producing the infrastructure to support various languages and to produce initial sets of content for them. This article represents the start of the second phase, in which the focus is moved to establishing overlapping coverage across the different sign languages. Building on the data produced so far, a new feature to assist annotation is introduced which leverages established partial synonymy between signs (inter- and cross-lingually) to discover likely additional synonymies. Other improvements to the annotation interface and workflow build directly on the experiences from the first phase. Working with the updated annotation interface, new data is produced for Polish Sign Language, Greek Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language.