Oral components and sign recognition in the Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Abstract

In contrast to the single-articulatory system of spoken languages, sign languages employ multiple articulators, including manual articulators and oral components. Oral components includes: voiced or voiceless parts of words of spoken language and voiced or voiceless sounds without any links to spoken language. In this paper, we present evidence based on the analysis of an Italian Sign Language (LIS) corpus gathered through two different requests: a naming task and a spontaneous production task. Analyses were made on 2.143 signs (naming task) and 68 minutes (spontaneous production task). The aims were to verify the statistical frequency of the oral components in signs in naming production task and in spontaneous production task and to test if the presence of mouthing facilitate the recognition of the sign in deaf signers.