Sign Language Dictionary

SLD's Mission

The mission of the SLD is to promote excellence in research, scholarship, and education by being accessible to everyone. To achieve that mission, the SLD is developed around three main goals:

Develop a practical and accessible writing system that captures Sign language phonology while being easily typed, stored, and searched.
Record the growing lexicons of signed languages using a descriptive process via original source material (see our Library page).
Provide Sign-centric web-based dictionaries for Sign language users written in their respective languages that includes definitions, references, and etymologies.

SLD in Context

A first look into a dictionary may be more perplexing than enlightening...

In the three decades since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted, the educational standards of the United States deaf and hard-of-hearing community have increased, and in that time, the proliferation of the internet has allowed deaf individuals to extend themselves around the world to embrace other people and cultures. In particular, the ease of video recording, storage, and dissemination has allowed deaf individuals to connect with each other worldwide, in a way never before seen. The hallmark of this is the web-based video dictionary. As of today, having video recordings in entries is now the standard for American Sign Language (ASL) dictionaries, and as of 2024, there are more than ten such dictionaries in existence.

The Issue with Dictionaries

Traditionally, spoken language dictionaries are monolingual, being written entirely in their respective orthographies. As is the case with English, such dictionaries are now available either as digital or printed texts. In each entry, a dictionary user expects to find the spelling of a given headword, its pronunciation, and any variants forms it has. For each sense of that headword, the user expects to find a part of speech, a definition, and perhaps notes on its etymology. A user also expects to find information on that headword's usage, such as whether it is general or technical and what the social impact is when used. Biographical, geographical, demographical, and political information may also be included. Quite often unfamiliar objects are illustrated and unfamiliar places are pinpointed on maps. Overarching is the organization of the entries, which are typically alphabetized. Above all, a user expects the dictionary to be accurate, since the dictionary has traditionally been a primary, if not the only, reference source readily available.

In contrast, ASL dictionaries have traditionally been treated more like bilingual glossaries, in which written English is used to gloss and describe signed word articulation. Definitions of ASL words are often entirely omitted, and to supplement the absence of definitions, multiple English glosses are often listed for the same word. For these glosses, their part of speech may sometimes be included. With this, many printed ASL dictionaries use combinations of English glosses, English prose describing the sequence of articulation of the word, line-drawings, and photographs to compose an entry. However, that combination within a text is not expected to be regular. Digital ASL dictionaries now utilize both video and photographs along with English glosses and prose to describe the articulation and meaning of ASL words. Though in general, within the modern ASL dictionary one should only expect to find a compilation of alphabetized English glosses as headwords, each corresponding to an ASL word within each entry.

The printed ASL dictionary has traditionally been the only source of information on ASL. To date, well over 50 ASL dictionaries have been published since 1860, some having multiple editions, and the vast majority have been dependent on written English in the way just described.

Our Solution

To us, the cause of the major differences between signed and spoken language dictionaries is obvious. The deaf community does not have a standardized writing system or an orthography for documenting signed prose. Despite several systems being created for ASL since the 1960s, none have been adopted by the community at large. Unfortunately, the lack of an accepted orthography may be attributed to an uncountable number of reasons. This lack has ultimately prevented a coalescence of devoted specialists, linguists, and editors, needed for researching and documenting a language, from compiling a monolingual ASL dictionary. That being the case, we must now act by directing ourselves towards testing and evaluating all the available orthographies, and boldly revising them until something of great utility is forged.

The SLD has been created in an effort to place a step in that direction. The orthography developed to build the SLD is just one of many options, and has been chosen for its ability to capture the phonology of signed language, while being easily typed, stored, and searched. We believe that a better orthography can be constructed, and to find that ideal structure, a significant amount of prose in many different orthographies needs to be written first. By displaying the inherent utility of writing in one's own language, the SLD aims to encourage more community-generated literature.

For these reasons, the SLD is free. No fee or membership is required to access our content and we encourage all who happen upon our work to release your inhibitions, unleash your imagination, share what you find, and prosper.

Our story

Dictionary construction with a novel writing system is a true feat of lexicography. From the initial concept to the unveiling of the SLD website, more than six years elapsed. Development and testing of our writing system began in the Spring of 2018. An early conceptual web-based deployment happened in the Fall of 2018, and was supported by the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, to which we are grateful. Later support was provided by the Journaled Knowledge website in 2020, which deployed a second web-based concept, to which we are also grateful. By the Fall of 2024, the SLD was first deployed being independently supported by its developers.

To create a descriptive or Sign-centric dictionary, the first compilation, design, and evaluation of the SLD required the transcription of signed words from over seven independent sources, text and video. Transcription for the SLD began in 2020 with the ASL dictionary by J. W. Michaels, published in 1923. This work continued and now includes ASL and Old French Sign documented from 1856 to the present. Since that transcription work was in a new writing system, it was necessary to first compile and transcribe over 3,000 words from our sources into spreadsheets to permit sorting and editing. During this process, the writing system was heavily revised.

Next came the software development phase, which followed an Agile development model. The plan-design-develop-test-deploy-review process yielded a suite of original client/server tools that sped up data collection, and allowed for data to be both computer- and human-readable. Following that, a transcription of over 5,000 additional signed words took place. At that point, an organization of the lexicon based on ASL phonology was possible. In the final stage, words were developed into entries through the addition of references, hyperlinks, and definitions. The final process of adding page layouts, accessibility testing, and tutorials came last.

The Prescriptive Side of Dictionary Building

While one of SLD's main focuses is to record language, a process that is descriptive, we are often forced to make many decisions and establish many rules to make our writing as clear as possible. This later process is more prescriptive in nature and enacted out of pure necessity. This is because the lexicon of ASL is too big to be described consistently without bringing its features together under generalizations, and without a system of rules there are no generalizations.

Many of these rules manifest as spelling conventions. For example, the ASL word lfaakfja-zsj-j, often glossed as language, could also be written as lfaakfja-j-zsj where the [lfa] handshape of both hands, palms down and thumbs touching, wiggle at the wrist repeatedly while simultaneously moving to the side away from the body. It was found prudent to spell the smaller repetitive wiggling motion first, then the larger linear movement. Applying this convention to all such words where there is a hierarchy of "smaller" and "larger" simultaneous motions becomes a rule, thereby allowing that phonetic pattern to be identified.

For more information on spelling, please see our Writing System page.

What's Next?

We are always working to improve and expand this resource and we need your help. In order of priority, the following list describes key tasks that are ongoing at the SLD:

Add more definitions in ASL to the Main ASL Dictionary.
Include more historical content on writing Sign languages.
Transcribe more printed Sign language dictionaries.
Include community generated literature.

Developers

The Sign Language Dictionary invites you to become a developer. The first step to becoming a developer with the Sign Language Dictionary is to contribute. Anyone can contribute. To contribute to the Sign Language Dictionary please vists our Contact Us page.

2024 - Present

Jacob Tosado, PhD - Tosado is a CODA physicist who holds a degree in experimental physics from the University of Maryland.

Carla D. Morris, PhD - Morris is a hearing L2 signer who holds degrees in linguistics from UC Berkeley (BA) and Gallaudet University (MA, PhD).

About the SLD