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Designing a Data Model for a Diachronic Sign Language Database: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Bohemian Sources

Paper · 2026 · Lenka Okrouhlíková

Summary

Historical sign language research is hampered because pre-video evidence survives only on paper, in dictionaries, teaching manuals and manuscripts. These sources describe isolated signs with uneven precision and inconsistent terminology and drawing conventions, and they often explain a sign's motivation rather than its form. The paper proposes a data model for a diachronic database of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European sign attestations that can handle this uncertainty. Each attestation is stored as a source-bound record with rich metadata. The model keeps primary evidence apart from scholarly interpretation, marks which sign parameters are attested and which are inferred, and assigns graded confidence values. Structural, iconic and metaphorical properties are annotated in separate parallel layers. The design draws on EvoSem, CLICS, Ticha, the Historical Sign Language Database and Bonnal-Vergès's iconic families. It is illustrated with nineteenth-century Bohemian (Czech) sources and shows that even fragmentary records can be organised for systematic comparison. This matters because the field currently centres on ASL and French Sign Language, and the model could support similar work on other European sign languages and help reassess assumed sign language family relations.

Key points

  • Record structure. Each record has a stable ID and an English reference gloss that reflects the original author's intended meaning. The gloss is explicitly not a claim of formal or lexical equivalence. The original source label is also kept.

  • Variants, parallels and compounds. The model separates internal variants within one source from parallels across different sources, avoiding premature lemmatisation. Compound signs can be segmented, with links to records of their component signs.

  • Written descriptions. These are stored in several layers:

    • a diplomatic transcription,
    • a normalised version for computational use,
    • an English translation,
    • editorial notes.

    Manuscripts additionally receive palaeographic remarks and graded legibility ratings.

  • Source metadata. Metadata covers:

    • authorship and biographical links,
    • provenance and repository,
    • page or folio location,
    • links to digitised facsimiles,
    • the representation type (illustration, lexicographic entry, prose description, notation, or a combination).

  • Main precedent. Supalla's Historical Sign Language Database for ASL combines early NAD films with French dictionaries by Brouland (1855), Pélissier (1856) and Lambert (1865). Bonnal-Vergès's concept of the "iconon" informs the model's interpretive layer.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Charles UniversityPrague · Czechia134 works · 21,055 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 17,450 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 17,296 worksPsychology · 1,649 worksDevelopmental and Educational Psychology · 523 worksLiterature and Literary Theory · 541 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.Historical linguistics & language change · 250 works

Cite

Cite as Lenka Okrouhlíková. 2026. Designing a Data Model for a Diachronic Sign Language Database: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Bohemian Sources. Proceedings of the LREC 2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.63317/5hxyoxmdi8ri

@inproceedings{okrouhlikova2026designing,
  title = {{Designing a Data Model for a Diachronic Sign Language Database: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century Bohemian Sources}},
  author = {Lenka Okrouhlíková},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the LREC 2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.63317/5hxyoxmdi8ri},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/5hxyoxmdi8ri}
}

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