Korean sign language retains basic characteristics of Korean, but unlike Korean as an agglutinative and audio-visual language, it shows distinct characteristics as a symbolic and motor-visual language at the same time. It is thus necessary to analyze and utilize Korean sign language as an independent meaning communication paradigm, instead of relying on a primarily syntactic and awkward mapping of Korean into sign language equivalents. In this work, we propose to use combinatory categorial grammar to analyze expressions in natural language such as Korean and examine the issues and elements that are relevant in the process of translating Korean into Korean sign language, showing how to utilize the idiosyncratic linguistic devices of Korean sign language for more natural expressions of Korean sign language with an implemented system.
