Improving phonological distance measures for signs: the CatFormCompare tool

Abstract

This paper describes the CatFormCompare tool, designed to enable the comparison of phonological content between pairs of signs, especially in larger datasets. With this tool and a schema for coding categorical form (the SL CatForm coding schema), a pipeline is created that allows a feedback mechanism for advancing research—specifically by directly addressing one of the hard problems in sign language phonology: how to extract true minimal pairs from datasets coded for categorical form? Solving this problem would simultaneously improve phonological distance measurements for sign languages because it would mean that the units for measuring distance are grounded in the linguistic structure of the language and not simply a by-product of the coding system. Here we report on the tool and the first evaluation of its functioning.

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