Kinematic Properties of Lexical and Transitional Movements in Sign Language of the Netherlands: A Cyberglove Study Ellen Ormel and Onno Crasborn Department of Linguistics, Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9103, NL-6500 HD Nijmegen, The Netherlands E.Ormel@let.ru.nl Abstract. We investigated whether there are quantitative phonetic differences between the kinematic properties of the lexical sign movements versus those of the transitional movements between signs in signed languages. A Cyberglove and an accessory location and orientation sensor (Flock of Birds system) were used to capture the phonetic movement of the fingers of signers of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). Changes across the coordinates on the X, Y, and Z- axes were examined. Two fluent users of NGT produced a set of sign pairs. The main result was a lower velocity in the transitional movements in comparison to the lexical movements. This difference may help the perceiver of sign language to distinguish the lexical movements from the transitional movements in the signing stream. Moreover, the development of automatic recognition of signed languages could benefit from those specific differences in velocity. Keywords: phonetics, sign language, transitional movements, velocity. 1 Introduction The articulation of signs within signed languages generally exists of simple movements of the fingers in space. As the movement of the next sign in a sentence is always likely to have a different starting point than the end point of the previous sign’s movement, a transitional movement is needed to reach this starting point. In other words, in order to change from the end location of a sign to the beginning location of the following sign, an additional (transitional) movement is required in nearly all cases. In the present study, we investigated whether there are quantitative phonetic differences between the kinematic properties of the lexical movements (within signs) versus those of the transitional movements (between subsequent signs) in signed languages. The present study focuses solely on the phonetic properties of sign, but in its motivation there is a clear link with the lexical phonological structure of signed languages (Crasborn, 2001; Johnston & Liddell, 2010, 2011). There have not been too many studies of sign language phonetics, although this is a subfield in sign language 80 E. Efthimiou and G. Kouroupetroglou (eds.) Proc. of the 9th International Gesture Workshop, May 25-27, 2011, Athens, Greece