The Danish Sign Language Dictionary
Facts and figures
The dictionary is (as of May 2008) freely accessible at: www.tegnsprog.dk
The dictionary was developed and edited at the Centre for Sign Language and Sign Supported Communication – KC in close cooperation with the Danish Deaf Association (DDL).
Centre for Sign Language is now a department of Københavns Professionshøjskole.
The editorial staff can be contacted through: [email protected]
Main features
The entries
The sign lemmas are represented through:
- A video clip of the base form (and potentially of one or more variants). A photo.
- A unique gloss, which represents the sign throughout the dictionary, regardless of its actual meaning in a given context.
- Drawings of the first location and handshape occurring in the description of the sign's manual features.
Clickable entry-level cross-references are given to:
- homonyms
- examples of lexicalised classifier verbs (referred to from classifier entries)
Polysemous signs are subdivided into separate meanings. Meanings with a semantically opaque relation to the basic meaning of the sign, are considered homonyms, and established as separate entries.
Common sign compounds, which meaning cannot be deducted as the sum of the meanings of the signs comprised in the compound, are described as separate meanings.
Each meaning is described through one or more Danish equivalents. Equivalents that can be used as mouthing for the sign in the particular meaning are marked with a special mouth symbol.
If no appropriate equivalent can be given, or if the equivalents do not fully cover the meaning of the sign, a prose description of the sign's use or function is provided.
Non-Danish mouth movements that often co-occur with the sign in a particular meaning are listed below the equivalents.
Clickable meaning-level cross-references are given to:
- synonyms
- short forms / long forms
- related number incorporations
- signs with a similar Danish equivalent, but a different meaning (the equivalent is homonymous or strongly polysemous).
A meaning can be accompanied by information about special restrictions in its use.
For the majority of meanings one or more usage example is provided.
The examples are rendered as video clips accompanied by glosses and Danish translations.
Both glosses and translations are searchable through text search.
All glosses that match dictionary entries are clickable (link to the appropriate entries).
Most of the usage examples are elicited from video recordings of a group of Sign Language consultants (all native signers) affiliated to the dictionary project.
Search facilities
The signs can be looked up through:
- Handshape (with a possibility of specifying particular handshapes for the active and the passive hand): See list her og click on “Hånd 1”.
- Location: See list her og click on “Steder”.
- Text, including phrase search ("...") and wildcard search (* and ?).
- Topics on front page.
- Combinations of the above.
Handshapes to be used in the search criteria are selected in groups of related handshapes. However, selected handshapes can be deselected individually, which gives the user the opportunity to select single handshapes or custom groups of handshapes, independently of the default handshape grouping.
The search result is by default ordered by relevance: Handshape and location matches are ordered according to their appearance in the sign. Text search matches are weighted in the following order: glosses, equivalents, glosses in usage examples, words in translations of usage examples. Matches with equal relevance are ordered first by location, then by handshape. Furthermore, the user can choose to sort the entire search result either by location or handshape.
Approximate key figures
2.300 sign entries
Due to limited resources and a strict project time frame, the first edition of the dictionary describes only the basic vocabulary of Danish Sign Language.
Among the entries are special entries for the following common "building blocks" of Danish Sign Language:
- Classifiers (49 entries)
- The manual alphabet (29 entries)
- The Mouth-Hand-System (14 entries)
- Affixes (6 entries)