ABSTRACT
The Berkeley Sign Language Acquisition Project has designed a system for transcribing videotapes of sign language interactions. The system was developed using data of adult-child interaction in American Sign Language (ASL) and Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN). It is intended to be applicable to all sign languages and to all genres of signing. The Berkeley Transcription System (BTS) is modeled on extensive experience with computerized transcription and analysis of child speech, and is explicitly designed to be compatible with the accepted international standards in that field. At the same time, BTS strives to present a consistently morphological analysis of each sign language under study. Support for this work has been provided by the Linguistics Program of the National Science Foundation under grant SBR-97-27050, “Can a Deaf Child Learn to Sign from Hearing Parents?” to Dan I. Slobin and Nini Hoiting. The transcription system is the joint effort of the following:
Dan I. Slobin (Psychology, University of California, Berkeley)
Nini Hoiting (Royal Institute for the Deaf “H.D. Guyot,” Haren, Netherlands)
Michelle Anthony (Psychology, University of California, Berkeley)
Yael Biederman (Education, University of California, Berkeley)
Marlon Kuntze (Education, Stanford University, Calif.)
Reyna Lindert (Psychology, University of California, Berkeley)
Jennie Pyers (Psychology, University of California, Berkeley)
Helen Thumann (Education, University of California, Berkeley)
Amy Weinberg (Education, University of California, Berkeley)
