Crowdsourcing for the Swedish Sign Language Dictionary

In this paper, we describe how we are actively using the Swedish Sign Language (SSL) community in collecting and documenting signs and lexical variation for our language resources, particularly the online Swedish Sign Language Dictionary (SSLD). Apart from using the SSL Corpus as a source of input for new signs and lexical variation in the SSLD, we also involve the community in two ways: first, we interact with SSL signers directly at various venues, collecting signs and judgments about signs; second, we discuss sign usage, lexical variation, and sign formation with SSL signers on social media, particularly through a Facebook group in which we both actively engage in and monitor discussions about SSL. Through these channels, we are able to get direct feedback on our language documentation work and improve on what has become the main lexicographic resource for SSL. We describe the process of simultaneously using corpus data, judgment and elicitation data, and crowdsourcing and discussion groups for enhancing the SSLD, and give examples of findings pertaining to lexical variation resulting from this work