Coarticulation

A linguistic phenomenon in sign language where the production of one sign influences the physical form of adjacent signs in continuous signing. For example, the ending hand position or handshape of one sign may affect the starting position or handshape of the next sign. Coarticulation causes signs produced in continuous conversation to look different from their isolated citation forms, making it challenging for sign language learners to recognize unfamiliar signs in videos and for computer vision systems to perform accurate sign recognition.