About ASL-LEX

ASL-LEX is a database of lexical and phonological properties of American Sign Language signs. It was first released in 2016 with nearly 1,000 signs. ASL-LEX was updated in Fall 2020 with greatly expanded information and an increased size of 2,723 signs.

ASL-LEX is available as a searchable web interface and as raw data in spreadsheet form. This website hosts the web visualization and provides instructions for how to use and download the database.

ASL-LEX 2.0 Contents

Name	Description	Notes
Frequency	Subjective Frequency Ratings	Ratings from 25 deaf signers/sign (native and early-exposed)
Iconicity	Iconicity Ratings	Ratings from 29 deaf signers/sign for 993 signs; 28 hearing non-signers/sign for all signs
Iconicity	Transparency Data	Guess Accuracy and Transparency Ratings available for 430 signs, 20 hearing non-signers/sign
Phonology	Phonological Coding	23 features, including dominant and non-dominant handshape and sign complexity. Coding for multiple morphemes and reference images for handshape are also provided.
	Neighborhood Density	Neighborhood Density - calculated using 15 features. Parameter Neighborhood Density - calculated using 3 primary parameters (Handshape, Major Location, Movement).
	Phonotactic Probability	Sublexical Frequency - frequency of each sublexical phonological feature. Phonotactic Probability - mean of scaled sub-lexical features.
Cross-Reference	English Translations	Available for 25% of signs
	Compatibility	ASL Signbank, SLAAASh, and ASL-CDI 2.0
	ASL-CDI 2.0 Semantic Categories
Videos	Reference video for each sign	All videos feature the same model against an identical background. Metadata also available: clip length, sign length, sign onset and sign offset

Articles

There are two articles that describe the procedures used to create the database and the 2.0 update. These articles report descriptive statistics for many sign properties and report analyses designed to more deeply understand how phonological, lexical, and semantic factors interact in the ASL lexicon.

Sevcikova Sehyr, Z., Caselli, N., Cohen-Goldberg, A. M., & Emmorey, K. (2021). The ASL-LEX 2.0 Project: A database of lexical and phonological properties for 2,723 signs in American Sign Language. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enaa038.
Caselli, N., Sevcikova Sehyr, Z., Cohen-Goldberg, A. M., & Emmorey, K. (2017). ASL-LEX: A lexical database of American Sign Language. Behavior Research Methods, 49(2), 784-801. doi:10.3758/s13428-016-0742-0.

ASL-LEX 1.0

The original ASL-LEX 1.0 database was released in 2016 and contained data for 993 signs. With the release of the new version, users are strongly recommended to only use data from ASL-LEX 2.0 going forward. This is because the new version contains more than twice as many signs, many more properties, and is likely to have more accurate values for properties such as neighborhood density which are calculated over the lexicon as a whole. To maintain compatibility with older research, users may still access the original ASL-LEX 1.0 visualization.

Creators

ASL-LEX is a collaboration between the Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience at San Diego State University, the Programs in Deaf Studies at Boston University, and the Psycholinguistics and Linguistics Lab at Tufts University.

Naomi Caselli Wheelock College of Education, Boston University
Visit Naomi's Website

Karen Emmorey School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
San Diego State University
Visit Karen's Website

Zed Sevcikova Sehyr School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
San Diego State University
Visit Zed's Website

Ariel Cohen-Goldberg Dept of Psychology, Tufts University
Visit Ariel's Website

Cindy O'Grady Farnady School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
San Diego State University
Visit Cindy's Website

Thanks

Many thanks to Cindy O'Grady Farnady for modeling all of the signs and helping with data collection, to the Boston University Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL) at the Hariri Institute for Computing (Shreya Pandit, Xinyun Cao, Jeff Simeon, Raj Vipani, Megan Fantes, Frederick Joossen, Fanonx Rogers, San Tran, Motunrola Bulomole, Andrei Lapets) for software development, and to Ben Tanen for his help developing the original visualizaiton for ASL-LEX 1.0. Thanks to Jennifer Feeney Petrich for her help in the initial stages of the project. Thanks also to Chelsea Hammond, Megan Canne, Anna Lim Frank, and Talia Cowen for their help coding the phonological properties.

Funding

The original work on ASL-LEX was supported by the National Institutes of Health DC010997 to Dr. Karen Emmorey and San Diego State University, a Tufts University Faculty Research Award to Dr. Ariel Cohen-Goldberg, and a Tufts University Graduate Research Award to Dr. Naomi Caselli.

Continuing work on ASL-LEX is supported by the National Science Foundation, Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences.

NSF Award BCS-1918556 to Dr. Zed Sevcikova Sehyr and Dr. Karen Emmorey
NSF Awards BCS-1625954 to Dr. Karen Emmorey
NSF Awards BCS-1625793 and BCS-1918252 to Dr. Naomi Caselli
NSF Awards BCS-1625761 and BCS-1918261 to Dr. Ariel Cohen-Goldberg