A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

There are two types of lexicographic work on TİD. One type is similar to standard spoken language dictionaries that are prepared according to lexicographic and linguistic methodologies. The only TİD dictionary of this kind is ‘The Current Dictionary of TİD’ (Güncel Türk İşaret Dili Sözlüğü) which has been online since 2017 (tidsozluk.net). The dictionary was prepared by a team led by Bahtiyar Makaroğlu and Hasan Dikyuva, sponsored by the Ministry of Family and Social Policies. The dictionary is based on the corpus described in the previous section [Socio-historical Background - 4.1.] with 165.000 annotated signs. The online dictionary consists of 2000 lexical entries that have the highest frequency of occurence in the corpus. Different from other dictionaries, search options are two-ways between TİD and Turkish. In other words, a sign can be searched by entering its handshape and location properties, or alternatively writing the Turkish translation. Each lexical entry consists of variants, other senses of the word, and sample sentences for each sense of the word. The ordering of the multiple senses is also based on the frequency of occurrence. 

The other type of lexicographic work is semi-lexicographic in the sense that most of them are prepared by presenting Turkish words to a Deaf model and asking her/him to produce the signs for the words. By 2015, the following Turkish-to-TİD word translation lists were published online or in press as cited in Dikyuva et al.’s grammar book:

‘Sign Language Guide for Adults’ Yetişkinler için İşaret Dili Kılavuzu (Ministry of Education Special Education, Guidance and Counseling Services General Management, 1995); updated and published in 2012 as Turkish Sign Language Dictionary “ Türk İşaret Dili Sözlüğü”

‘Turkish Sign Language Word List’ Türk İşaret Dili Kelime Listesi (Özyürek, İlkbaşaran, & Arık, 2004; 750-word, Koç University)

‘Turkish Sign Language Resource Website’ Türk İşaret Dili Kaynak Sitesi (published online in 2008 and updated several times by İsmail Arı, Pınar Santemiz, and Lale Akarun. Boğaziçi University, Artificial Intelligence Lab in Computer Engineering)

TİD vocabulary list published within the scope of the project İki Elin Sesi ‘The Voice of Two Hands’ (The Association of Persons with Disabilities in Turkey, 2008)

‘Turkish Sign Language Education Material’ Türk İşaret Dili Eğitim Materyali (İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality, 2012)

‘Turkish Sign Language Manual’ Türk İşaret Dili Kılavuzu (Barışık, 2012; Yargı Yayınevi, Ankara).

‘Smart Sign Language’ Akıllı İşaret Dili published by ‘Ankara Çankaya Deaf International Sign Language Research Education Instruction and Sports Association’ Ankara Çankaya Sağırlar Uluslararası İşaret Dili Araştırma Eğitim Öğretim ve Spor Kulübü Derneği in 2013.

‘Turkish Sign Language’ Türk İşaret Dili translation dictionary published online by Anatolian University Open Education Faculty (Akalın, Cavkaytar, Oral 2014).

‘Turkish Sign Language Dictionary of Religious Concepts’ Türk İşaret Dili Dini Kavramlar Sözlüğü published by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs in 2014. A positive aspect of the dictionary is that the neologisms are akin to native TİD words in phonological shape, and fingerspelling use is very minimal.

‘Spreadthesign.com’ prepared by European Sign Language Center (2010) that aims to include vocational technical terms in several sign languages together with TİD. However the technical signs heavily rely on fingerspelling rather than native word-formation.  Co-ordinator: Thomas Lydell-Olsen. Turkish Sign Language signs from Mert Öztüre İşitme Engelliler Lisesi, İzmir. Co-ordinator: Gökhan Kaya, Teachers: Cevriye Kaya, İlker Şimşek. 

A more recent semi-lexicographic Turkish-TİD dictionary (http://www.tid.itu.edu.tr/TidGlossary)is part of 'TiDLaR', a language resource which was developed by a team of linguists from Boğaziçi University and a team of computer engineers from İstanbul Technical University. This online dictionary contains 1530 TİD signs, collected under 990 Turkish lexical entries. The Turkish lexical entries are based on the words and expressions found in 1st grade elementary school coursebooks, published and distributed by the Ministry of Education. Each TİD sign is annotated based on a detailed annotation scheme. The description of the second component of the TiDLaR language resource, namely the Turkish-TİD parallel corpus treebank, can be found in [Socio-historical background - 4.3].  The detailed descriptions of these two components can be found in Eryiğit et al. (2016) and Eryiğit et al. (2019). The development of this language resource was funded by TÜBİTAK (project no 114E263).