Bringing traditional sign linguistics and artificial intelligence
The SignLab investigates how signs and signed sentences are structured and interpreted across sign languages, and how new signs and structures emerge and evolve over time. SingLab investigates Sign Language of the Netherlands, but also many other sign languages, including Filipino Sign Language, Catalan Sign Language, and Russian Sign Language.
SignLab uses traditional methods to collect and analyze data (video recording and manual annotation), but also develops new methods making use of computer vision and machine learning techniques. Based on the patterns found in the data, the Lab develop theoretical models of how signed sentences are structured and how they are interpreted. These models make precise predictions, which are tested on further data, for instance from other sign languages. This allows it to refine our theoretical models further and further, and gain a better understanding of how sign languages, and human languages in general, work.
More information about the SignLab can be found on the official website. Here you can read about some focus areas of the research conducted, about the ways in which research is applied and you can find various publications on this theme.