Ellen Ormel - Independent Researcher (original) (raw)
Papers by Ellen Ormel
Interference: a case study of lexical borrowings in international sign interpreting
International Journal of Multilingualism, Jun 8, 2022
Laboratory Phonology, Apr 28, 2017
This article investigates the articulation of the thumb in flat handshapes (B handshapes) in Sign... more This article investigates the articulation of the thumb in flat handshapes (B handshapes) in Sign Language of the Netherlands. On the basis of phonological models of handshape, the hypothesis was generated that the thumb state is variable and will undergo coarticulatory influences of neighboring signs. This hypothesis was tested by investigating thumb articulation in signs with B handshapes that occur frequently in the Corpus NGT. Manual transcriptions were made of the thumb state in two dimensions and of the spreading of the fingers in a total of 728 tokens of 14 sign types, and likewise for the signs on the left and right of these targets, as produced by 61 signers. Linear mixed-effects regression (LME4) analyses showed a significant prediction of the thumb state in the target sign based on the thumb state in the preceding as well as following neighboring sign. Moreover, the degree of spreading of the other fingers in the target sign also influenced the position of the thumb. We conclude that there is evidence for phonological models of handshapes in sign languages that argue that not all fingers are relevant in all signs. Phonological feature specifications can single out specific fingers as the articulators, leaving other fingers unspecified. We thus argue that the standard term 'handshape' is in fact a misnomer, as it is typically not the shape of the whole hand that is specified in the lexicon.
Corpus NGT Annotations, 3rd release
Linguistics, 2015
In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part... more In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the southern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf communities, videos were presented in two conditions: first without and subsequently with mouthings. As we hypothesized, both LSFB and NGT signers understood narratives better than informative signing, showing for the first time that iconic structures facilitate comprehension of foreign signing. Furthermore,...
Sign Language Studies, 2012
Handedness in the Corpus NGT
slls.eu, 2010
Page 1. Handedness in the Corpus NGT Anna Sáfár, Onno Crasborn & Ellen Ormel Centre for L... more Page 1. Handedness in the Corpus NGT Anna Sáfár, Onno Crasborn & Ellen Ormel Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen Introduction It is assumed that signers, like everyone else, are generally either right-handed or left-...
7th Workshop on the representation and processing of sign languages: Corpus mining. Language Reso... more 7th Workshop on the representation and processing of sign languages: Corpus mining. Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), 28 mei 2016
Mutual intelligibility among the sign languages of Belgium and the Netherlands
In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign lan guages of the northern pa... more In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign lan guages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the south ern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf communities, videos were presented in two conditions: first without and subsequently with mouthings. As we hypothesized, both LSFB and NGT signers understood narra tives better than informative signing, showing for the first time that iconic struc tures facilitate comprehension of foreign signing. Furthermore, the results at least partially confirm our hypothesis that NGT signers benefit more from mouth ings than LSFB signers, uncovering a source of intelligibility that is unique to sign languages.
Mutual intelligibility among the sign languages of Belgium and the Netherlands
Linguistics, 2015
ABSTRACT In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the nort... more ABSTRACT In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the southern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf communities, videos were presented in two conditions: first without and subsequently with mouthings. As we hypothesized, both LSFB and NGT signers understood narratives better than informative signing, showing for the first time that iconic structures facilitate comprehension of foreign signing. Furthermore, the results at least partially confirm our hypothesis that NGT signers benefit more from mouthings than LSFB signers, uncovering a source of intelligibility that is unique to sign languages.
The SignSpeak project will be the first step to approach sign language recognition and translatio... more The SignSpeak project will be the first step to approach sign language recognition and translation at a scientific level already reached in similar research fields such as automatic speech recognition or statistical machine translation of spoken languages. Deaf communities revolve around sign languages as they are their natural means of communication. Although deaf, hard of hearing and hearing signers can communicate without problems amongst themselves, there is a serious challenge for the deaf community in trying to integrate into educational, social and work environments. The overall goal of SignSpeak is to develop a new vision-based technology for recognizing and translating continuous sign language to text. New knowledge about the nature of sign language structure from the perspective of machine recognition of continuous sign language will allow a subsequent breakthrough in the development of a new vision-based technology for continuous sign language recognition and translation. Existing and new publicly available corpora will be used to evaluate the research progress throughout the whole project.
Sectie Gebarentaal en Gesture. Effects of bimodal input
Child: Care, Health and Development, 2001
The Sonksen Picture Guide to Visual Function (SPGVF) assesses a person's ability to discriminate ... more The Sonksen Picture Guide to Visual Function (SPGVF) assesses a person's ability to discriminate pictures of everyday objects. Sonksen added the SPGVF to tests of visual acuity, because real objects, miniatures, and pictures are the main learning medium for young children. In earlier studies correlations have been found between visual acuity and responses to the SPGVF. However, to date no studies have used visually impaired children. In the study reported here, the associations between performance on the SPGVF task, visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were investigated. Participants were 17 visually impaired and 29 children without disabilities, 4-6 years of age. The results showed that visual acuity was more important for picture recognition than contrast sensitivity. Contrast thresholds < 3.33% implied that not all SPGVF-pictures could be recognized. The visually impaired children in the current study showed shorter mean identification distances than the normally sighted children in the original Sonksen and Macrae study.
Language. In the present study, we established similar effects for Sign Language of the Netherlan... more Language. In the present study, we established similar effects for Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Moreover, we examined whether the degree of coarticulation of location is sensitive to phonological distinctions. We investigated whether types of major locations in the lexicon (i.e., 'weak hand', 'torso', and 'neutral space') showed different degrees of sensitivity to the surrounding signs. Additionally, we investigated whether different types of movement (i.e., initial contact or final contact with the body) influenced the susceptibility of a sign to change its location under the influence of neighbouring signs. Five deaf adult signers participated in our study. The data were collected using CyberGlove and Flock of Bird, respectively tracking the bending of the fingers with 22 resistant bend-sensors and the X, Y, and Z-coordinates. Location of hand height was measured in sign series, comparing the effect of surrounding signs at high and low locations. Results showed that height of the neighbouring signs influenced location height of the target sign. Moreover, coarticulation of location was sensitive to phonological distinctions in the lexicon. Strongest effects of coarticulation were observed at the location 'weak hand', and were heavily influenced by contact type.
This paper contains a literature review of prosodic evidence for large prosodic domains that corr... more This paper contains a literature review of prosodic evidence for large prosodic domains that correspond to syntactic units like the clause or the sentence. In particular, different phonetic non-manual cues that may relate to clause or sentence boundaries are discussed in detail. On the basis of various ideas and views in the literature, we also describe two types of possible studies that would further our understanding of prosodic domains and their relation to sentence boundaries. The first type of study is a refinement to a recent series of perception studies in which the intuitions of signers are elicited on break points in stretches of discourse. The second type of study exploits new techniques from visual signal processing to detect salient events in a video recording of signing. The paper concludes with a discussion on how knowledge of the prosody of signed languages can be employed for language technology.
Interventie, ondersteuning en onderwijs voor mensen met auditieve-/communicatie en verstandelijke beperkingen
ABSTRACT
Mensen met Auditieve -/Communicatieve en Verstandelijke Beperkingen (ACVB)
ABSTRACT
Assessment in zorg en onderwijs voor mensen met auditieve-/communicatie en verstandelijke beperkingen
ABSTRACT
Mensen met Auditieve -/Communicatieve en Verstandelijke Beperkingen (ACVB): classificatie, typologie en incidentie
ABSTRACT
Wat weten we over mensen met meervoudige auditieve en verstandelijke beperkingen? Een literatuur review
Interference: a case study of lexical borrowings in international sign interpreting
International Journal of Multilingualism, Jun 8, 2022
Laboratory Phonology, Apr 28, 2017
This article investigates the articulation of the thumb in flat handshapes (B handshapes) in Sign... more This article investigates the articulation of the thumb in flat handshapes (B handshapes) in Sign Language of the Netherlands. On the basis of phonological models of handshape, the hypothesis was generated that the thumb state is variable and will undergo coarticulatory influences of neighboring signs. This hypothesis was tested by investigating thumb articulation in signs with B handshapes that occur frequently in the Corpus NGT. Manual transcriptions were made of the thumb state in two dimensions and of the spreading of the fingers in a total of 728 tokens of 14 sign types, and likewise for the signs on the left and right of these targets, as produced by 61 signers. Linear mixed-effects regression (LME4) analyses showed a significant prediction of the thumb state in the target sign based on the thumb state in the preceding as well as following neighboring sign. Moreover, the degree of spreading of the other fingers in the target sign also influenced the position of the thumb. We conclude that there is evidence for phonological models of handshapes in sign languages that argue that not all fingers are relevant in all signs. Phonological feature specifications can single out specific fingers as the articulators, leaving other fingers unspecified. We thus argue that the standard term 'handshape' is in fact a misnomer, as it is typically not the shape of the whole hand that is specified in the lexicon.
Corpus NGT Annotations, 3rd release
Linguistics, 2015
In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part... more In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the southern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf communities, videos were presented in two conditions: first without and subsequently with mouthings. As we hypothesized, both LSFB and NGT signers understood narratives better than informative signing, showing for the first time that iconic structures facilitate comprehension of foreign signing. Furthermore,...
Sign Language Studies, 2012
Handedness in the Corpus NGT
slls.eu, 2010
Page 1. Handedness in the Corpus NGT Anna Sáfár, Onno Crasborn & Ellen Ormel Centre for L... more Page 1. Handedness in the Corpus NGT Anna Sáfár, Onno Crasborn & Ellen Ormel Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen Introduction It is assumed that signers, like everyone else, are generally either right-handed or left-...
7th Workshop on the representation and processing of sign languages: Corpus mining. Language Reso... more 7th Workshop on the representation and processing of sign languages: Corpus mining. Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), 28 mei 2016
Mutual intelligibility among the sign languages of Belgium and the Netherlands
In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign lan guages of the northern pa... more In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign lan guages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the south ern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf communities, videos were presented in two conditions: first without and subsequently with mouthings. As we hypothesized, both LSFB and NGT signers understood narra tives better than informative signing, showing for the first time that iconic struc tures facilitate comprehension of foreign signing. Furthermore, the results at least partially confirm our hypothesis that NGT signers benefit more from mouth ings than LSFB signers, uncovering a source of intelligibility that is unique to sign languages.
Mutual intelligibility among the sign languages of Belgium and the Netherlands
Linguistics, 2015
ABSTRACT In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the nort... more ABSTRACT In an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the southern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf communities, videos were presented in two conditions: first without and subsequently with mouthings. As we hypothesized, both LSFB and NGT signers understood narratives better than informative signing, showing for the first time that iconic structures facilitate comprehension of foreign signing. Furthermore, the results at least partially confirm our hypothesis that NGT signers benefit more from mouthings than LSFB signers, uncovering a source of intelligibility that is unique to sign languages.
The SignSpeak project will be the first step to approach sign language recognition and translatio... more The SignSpeak project will be the first step to approach sign language recognition and translation at a scientific level already reached in similar research fields such as automatic speech recognition or statistical machine translation of spoken languages. Deaf communities revolve around sign languages as they are their natural means of communication. Although deaf, hard of hearing and hearing signers can communicate without problems amongst themselves, there is a serious challenge for the deaf community in trying to integrate into educational, social and work environments. The overall goal of SignSpeak is to develop a new vision-based technology for recognizing and translating continuous sign language to text. New knowledge about the nature of sign language structure from the perspective of machine recognition of continuous sign language will allow a subsequent breakthrough in the development of a new vision-based technology for continuous sign language recognition and translation. Existing and new publicly available corpora will be used to evaluate the research progress throughout the whole project.
Sectie Gebarentaal en Gesture. Effects of bimodal input
Child: Care, Health and Development, 2001
The Sonksen Picture Guide to Visual Function (SPGVF) assesses a person's ability to discriminate ... more The Sonksen Picture Guide to Visual Function (SPGVF) assesses a person's ability to discriminate pictures of everyday objects. Sonksen added the SPGVF to tests of visual acuity, because real objects, miniatures, and pictures are the main learning medium for young children. In earlier studies correlations have been found between visual acuity and responses to the SPGVF. However, to date no studies have used visually impaired children. In the study reported here, the associations between performance on the SPGVF task, visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were investigated. Participants were 17 visually impaired and 29 children without disabilities, 4-6 years of age. The results showed that visual acuity was more important for picture recognition than contrast sensitivity. Contrast thresholds < 3.33% implied that not all SPGVF-pictures could be recognized. The visually impaired children in the current study showed shorter mean identification distances than the normally sighted children in the original Sonksen and Macrae study.
Language. In the present study, we established similar effects for Sign Language of the Netherlan... more Language. In the present study, we established similar effects for Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Moreover, we examined whether the degree of coarticulation of location is sensitive to phonological distinctions. We investigated whether types of major locations in the lexicon (i.e., 'weak hand', 'torso', and 'neutral space') showed different degrees of sensitivity to the surrounding signs. Additionally, we investigated whether different types of movement (i.e., initial contact or final contact with the body) influenced the susceptibility of a sign to change its location under the influence of neighbouring signs. Five deaf adult signers participated in our study. The data were collected using CyberGlove and Flock of Bird, respectively tracking the bending of the fingers with 22 resistant bend-sensors and the X, Y, and Z-coordinates. Location of hand height was measured in sign series, comparing the effect of surrounding signs at high and low locations. Results showed that height of the neighbouring signs influenced location height of the target sign. Moreover, coarticulation of location was sensitive to phonological distinctions in the lexicon. Strongest effects of coarticulation were observed at the location 'weak hand', and were heavily influenced by contact type.
This paper contains a literature review of prosodic evidence for large prosodic domains that corr... more This paper contains a literature review of prosodic evidence for large prosodic domains that correspond to syntactic units like the clause or the sentence. In particular, different phonetic non-manual cues that may relate to clause or sentence boundaries are discussed in detail. On the basis of various ideas and views in the literature, we also describe two types of possible studies that would further our understanding of prosodic domains and their relation to sentence boundaries. The first type of study is a refinement to a recent series of perception studies in which the intuitions of signers are elicited on break points in stretches of discourse. The second type of study exploits new techniques from visual signal processing to detect salient events in a video recording of signing. The paper concludes with a discussion on how knowledge of the prosody of signed languages can be employed for language technology.
Interventie, ondersteuning en onderwijs voor mensen met auditieve-/communicatie en verstandelijke beperkingen
ABSTRACT
Mensen met Auditieve -/Communicatieve en Verstandelijke Beperkingen (ACVB)
ABSTRACT
Assessment in zorg en onderwijs voor mensen met auditieve-/communicatie en verstandelijke beperkingen
ABSTRACT
Mensen met Auditieve -/Communicatieve en Verstandelijke Beperkingen (ACVB): classificatie, typologie en incidentie
ABSTRACT
Wat weten we over mensen met meervoudige auditieve en verstandelijke beperkingen? Een literatuur review