1. To create an ISL “corpus“: a collection, on the internet, of video clips showing deaf people using ISL, together with background information about the signers and written descriptions of the signing.
2. To carry out research into ISL grammar and vocabulary, variation in ISL across the country and how ISL is changing.

ISL is rich with variation. Not every deaf person signs in exactly the same way. For example, deaf people in Tel Aviv sign ‘chocolate’ differently from deaf people in Haifa. Older deaf people sign ‘television’ differently from younger deaf people. One of the aims of this corpus is to research these differences – how ISL varies across groups of signers and how the language is changing over time. In order to do this, we filmed deaf people from all over Israel and from all sorts of different backgrounds – old, young, male, female, Ashkenazi, Morrocan, Jewish, Arab, etc. We filmed deaf people signing freely – in conversations, telling stories, answering questions – as well as showing their signs for pictures.