When nonmanuals meet semantics and syntax: towards a practical guide for the segmentation of sign language discourse

This paper aims to contribute to the segmentation of sign language (SL) discourses by providing an operational synthesis of the criteria that signers use to segment a SL discourse. Such procedure was required when it came to analyse the role of buoys as discourse markers (DMs), which is part of a PhD on DMs in French Belgian SL (LSFB). All buoy markers found in the data had to be differentiated in terms of scope: some markers (like most list buoy markers) seemed to be long range markers, whereas others (like most fragment buoy markers) seemed to have a local scope only. Our practical guide results from a hierarchized and operationalized synthesis of the criteria, which explain the segmentation judgments of deaf (native and non-native) and hearing (non-native) signers of LSFB who were asked to segment a small-scale (1h) corpus. These criteria are a combination of non-manual, semantic and syntactic cues. Our contribution aims to be shared, tested on other SLs and hopefully improved to provide SL researchers who conduct discourse studies with some efficient and easy-to-use guidelines, and avoid them extensive (and time-consuming) annotation of the manual and non-manual cues that are related to the marking of boundaries in SLs.