Sign Language Phoible

Sign Language Phoible is a cross-linguistic repository of sign language phonological data. Inspired by PHOIBLE and following a similar structure and approach, it presents phonological inventories adapted to the unique properties of sign languages.

What the Repository Contains

Segments

The main parameters of sign languages are commonly understood to be handshape, movement, location, orientation, and non-manual features. However, unlike segments represented in IPA for spoken languages, the basic phonological unit for sign languages has not been clearly established. For this reason, this repository treats each symbol in a given parameter as a separate segment.

The current data centers on handshapes, but additional parameters will be considered in the future.

Notation System

There is no universally adopted notational standard for the phonetic representation of all sign languages, as IPA is for spoken languages. The repository uses the following notation systems:

• Formal SignWriting in ASCII (FSW)
• HamNoSys

Additional forms of notation may be added in the future.

Inventories and Sources

The current inventories draw on more than one type of source. Current sources include:

• Manually collected handshape inventories from 12 datasets compiled by Longqian Ming (2024).
• Automatically extracted FSW data from 82 SignPuddle dictionaries

Languages

Approximately 85–88 sign languages are currently assessed.

For SignPuddle inventories that identify a country but do not explicitly name a language, a Glottolog anaylsys was performed to attribute the language:

• Where Glottolog lists only one sign language for a country, that language is assigned.
• Where majority and minority or endangered languages coexist, the main national language is assigned.
• Languages are combined if a country has more than one major sign language (e.g., Myanmar, Northern Ireland, and Vietnam).
• Languages not listed in Glottolog remain included and are marked as such.