What Comes First: Combining Motion Capture and Eye Tracking Data to Study the Order of Articulators in Constructed Action in Sign Language Narratives

We use synchronized 120 fps motion capture and 50 fps eye tracking data from two native signers to investigate the temporal order in which the dominant hand, the head, the chest and the eyes start producing overt constructed action from regular narration in seven short Finnish Sign Language stories. From the material, we derive a sample of ten instances of regular narration to overt constructed action transfers in ELAN which we then further process and analyze in Matlab. The results indicate that the temporal order of articulators shows both contextual and individual variation but that there are also repeated patterns which are similar across all the analyzed sequences and signers. Most notably, when the discourse strategy changes from regular narration to overt constructed action, the head and the eyes tend to take the leading role, and the chest and the dominant hand tend to start acting last. Consequences of the findings are discussed.