The Japanese Sign Language Corpus:A Work in Progress

摘要

Among Deaf Japanese communities throughout the country, it is well known that the development of Japanese Sign Language (JSL) began in 1857, the date of the founding of the first school for deaf children in Japan, which had adopted sign language as its teaching method. Despite 130 years of JSL use in Japan, however, no data resources are available to support historical linguistic research on JSL. To fill the void, this author is involved in pioneering work with colleagues from various universities and the Deaf Japanese community. To support reconstruction of the history of JSL, two prototype resources have been developed and are now available online for sign language research and education communities.