American Sign Language Linguistic Research Project
Investigation of the syntactic structure of ASL, with particular emphasis on the hierarchical representation of functional categories. Recent work has explored clausal structure: both the manual and non-manual expressions found with question phrases, tense, aspect, negation, and agreement.Image and Video Computing Group
Research in the computer vision fields of person, head and skin tracking, and gesture recognition.SignStream™ is a database tool for analysis of linguistic data captured on video. SignStream provides a single computing environment for manipulating video and linking specific frame sequences to simultaneously occurring linguistic events encoded in a fine-grained, multi-level transcription. Designed for annotation and analysis of sign language and gesture, SignStream is distributed on a non-profit basis to educators, researchers, and students.Essential Tools for Computational Research on Visual-Gestural Language Data (collaboration between C. Neidle and S. Sclaroff)
This project involves a Java reimplementation of SignStream to include tools for efficient data entry of fine-grained phonological information and integration of information provided by computer algorithms, among other new features. Machine vision-based algorithms for semi-automation of several aspects of the transcription process will also be developed.