Co-sign gestures in three sign languages: same or different? Comparative corpus-based study of manual gestures in Polish, German and Russian Sign Language


 
Funding:
Bekker Scholarship Program, Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (2021 - 2023)
 
Project summary: 
This project aims at providing a comparative description if the usage of two manual elements found in three European sign languages (Polish SL, German SL and Russian SL) and a literature-based comparison to their use in co-speech gesture.
 
We will focus our analyses on:
 
  • Palm-up (a manual activity of rotating one's forearms so that the palms face upward)
  • Throw-away (a gesture of an open hand going downward, meaning e.g. 'never mind')
The study will be based on naturalistic corpus data coming from the multi-media SL corpora of the mentioned SLs. The outcomes of the previous corpus studies show that some gestural SL elements behave similarly to the same gestures found in spoken communication. Thus, we assume to discover more similarities in the usage of analyzed gestures by speakers and signers than has been previously noted. Performing the study in Cologne provides an opportunity of collaboration between three researchers specialized in corpus studies if SLs, which is crucial to the project's success.
 
Post-doc: Anna Kuder