Turkish Sign Language Word List
Methodology
The preparation of this word list is the result of 3 years of research conducted with the deaf community in Istanbul; therefore, the signs in this website are mostly those used in Istanbul. However, we have also tried to list the variations of each sign that are used outside of Istanbul where possible.
In the first phase of the project, we collected
approximately 10 hours of videotaped material that consists
of natural conversations and elicited signs from 20 different
signers - both early and late learners. In the next phase,
we transcribed and translated all the signs used in these
materials with two CODAs, Nermin Merdanoglu and Bilge Çelikok.
Later we selected and compared the most frequently used signs
in our database. This assured us that the signs we have selected
are at least used by most of the people in our sample. Finally,
the selected signs were evaluated and re-produced by three
early learner deaf signers, to be placed in the word list.
In addition to the signs recorded in our
project, there are a total of 200 extra signs in the word
list, recorded during the TID project of Mary Essex. We greatly
appreciate her cooperation.
Still, there is a major need to expand this
research nation-wide, in order to fully document Turkish Sign
Language, with its regional variations.
How to use this word list
The site has two main parts:
1) Basic conceptual categories:
- numbers
- time related concepts
- visual concepts
- animals
- professions
- place names
- pronouns
- narratives
Once you choose a category (i.e., time, visual
etc.) on the left, you may proceed by clicking on the word
you are interested in from the sub-categories that appear
on the frame on the right. In the middle frame you can see
the sign corresponding to the word you have chosen. You can
control the movies by using the control panels below each
one. Simply double-click the movie to replay.
Since some concepts may have more than one
correspondent sign, the number of possible signs is indicated
beside the title of each middle frame. In such cases you may
simply scroll down to view all the outputs.
2) A to Z:
In this section there are approximately 750
signs which are listed alphabetically. As you click each letter
from the alphabet above, the corresponding word list appears
on the left, with its English translation. Each selected word
is then represented with a QT movie that you can control manually.
You can scroll down to view all the outputs.
As you can see above, the handshapes used
in each sign are indicated under the movie, with the order
of their production. The handshapes illustrated in the A-Z
word list are based on the Hamburg Notation Sign System (HamNoSys).
In cases where we found handshapes that were not in the HamNoSys
we added photographs of handshapes from TID. We would like
to thank Els van der Kooij and Onno Crasborn
from the Universty of Nijmegen for making the handshapes avaliable
for us through the Sign Phone database.
Please contact
us for your further questions and comments on the
TID word list and the website in general.
|
