Motivating the Computational Phonological Parameters of an Irish Sign Language Avatar

Avatars are life-like characters that exist in a virtual world on our computer monitors. Utilising these synthetic actors together with an appropriate computational model provides us with the potential to alleviate the communication barrier that Irish Sign Language users and members of the Deaf community in Ireland face on a daily basis. Like all other sign languages, Irish Sign Language is a naturally occurring indigenous, visual, gestural language without any aural or written form. Irish Sign Language is a very rich and complex language in linguistic terms. Communication occurs using a visual-gestural modality, encompassing manual and non-manual gestures. Manual gestures make use of hand forms, hand locations, hand movements and orientations of the palm. Non-manual gestures include the use of eye gaze, facial expression, head and upper body movements. The visual-gestural realisation of a word in sign language involves the simultaneous and parallel expression of a varied number of manual and non-manual features, each with their own duration, orientation and relative configuration. The question this chapter answers is how do we motivate the phonological-morphological interface in Irish Sign Language? It is envisaged that the avatar utilised in the development of this research will later be employed for real-time sign language visualisation for Irish Sign Language.