Update : 3 november 2023
Permanent researcher : Annelies Braffort, Michael Filhol, Michèle Gouiffès
Permanent computer graphist : Cyril Verrecchia
PhD students : Camille Challant, Julie Halbout, Yanis Ouakrim, Paritosh Sharma
Post-docs : Emmanuella Martinod
Engineers : Thomas Von Ascheberg, Julie Halbout
External collaborator : Claire Danet
Sign Languages (SL) are natural languages used in Deaf communities, and French Sign Language (LSF) is the language used in France. They are visuo-gestural languages: a person expresses him/her-self in SL using numerous bodily components (hands and arms, but also facial expressions, gaze, torso, etc.) and their interlocutor perceives the message through the visual channel. The SL linguistic system exploits these specific channels: a large amount of information is expressed simultaneously and organised spatially, and iconicity plays a central role.
To date, SL do not have a standard writing or graphic system for transcription. They are still poorly described and have under-resources (very few reference works, limited signbanks, partial knowledge of grammar, few resources in general). Computer modelling of SL requires the design of representations with little available data, and where pre-existing models, which are essentially linear, have been developed for written or spoken languages and do not cover all aspects of LS.
Our research questions cover the following aspects: How can sign languages be analysed, represented and processed? How can we take into account the linguistic specificities linked to their visual-gestural nature (multilinearity, spatialisation, iconicity)? What types of approach are possible with little French sign language (LSF) data?
Through national and international projects and collaborations, we produce linguistic resources and tackle problems of analysis, representation and processing of LSF in an interdisciplinary way, with points of view from several fields of computer science (NLP, signal processing, computer vision, computer graphics), as well as from the sciences of language, movement and perception.
The corpora produced or co-produced by LISN are accessible to public research on the Ortolang website.