Figure  12:  An  angry  signer  asking  a  WH  question.  

An  additional  challenge  is  the  incorporation  of  paralinguistic  information,  such  as  

mouthing.    Although  it  can  play  a  vital  role  in  communication,  many  researchers  do  not  

consider  it  a  true  part  of  ASL  (Nadolske  &  Rosenstock,  2007).  Thus,  researchers  should  have  

the  option  to  include  or  exclude  this  additional  data  when  generating  utterances.    

Nevertheless,  when  present  it  will  interact  with  other  non-­‐manual  facial  signals.  

In  short,  the  synthesis  of  ASL  requires  a  representation  capable  of  managing  massive  

amounts  of  data.  Any  new  generative  representational  system  should  take  advantage  of  the  

framework  of  ASL  linguistics  as  a  way  to  cope  with  the  data.  It  offers  a  concise  structure  to  

help  organize  and  codify  the  complexity  of  ASL.    Thus,  synthesized  signs  arise  from  the  

combination  of  a  linguistically-­‐based  representation  and  an  underlying  animation  

framework  that  abstracts  geometric  details  necessary  to  produce  natural,  convincing  

motion.  

CURRENT  SOFTWARE  
Although  conventional  animation  packages  certainly  provide  methods  to  specify  poses  

(geometry)  and  timing,  in  an  abstract,  graphical  representation  (Autodesk,  2011),  none  of  

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