Documentation is one of the most important stages in the process of dictionary compilation. One of the main goals of the project was to record as many sign language terms as possible in the fields of law and medicine. The documentation team thoroughly reviewed a wide range of source materials — including the PJM Corpus, online sign language dictionaries, printed resources (such as dictionaries, phrasebooks, and textbooks), as well as videos and PJM translations available online. A complete list of sources can be found on the project website (above).
The earliest language materials date back to the second half of the 1990s, while the most recent were created in 2022. In total, the team reviewed 288 hours of individual video recordings, 550 hours of corpus recordings, 994 entries from online dictionaries, and 1,626 pages of printed publications. This comprehensive examination of rich and varied sources made it possible to document PJM vocabulary that reflects actual language use.
Members of the documentation team searched for signs corresponding to a precompiled list of key Polish legal and medical terms. These lists were developed by legal and medical experts who served as the project's social partners. The list of legal terms included over 550 lexemes, while the medical vocabulary list comprised approximately 800 Polish terms. Team members were also allowed to expand the list with new entries if, during their review of language materials, they encountered PJM signs with Polish equivalents not previously included in the terminology inventory.
While working with source texts, all types of sign language forms were recorded — including lexical signs as well as productive forms (classifiers, constructed action, and pantomimic signs). Instances in which a Polish lexeme was represented using the fingerspelling alphabet instead of a PJM sign were also documented. Both signs and their variants were recorded; a variant was treated as a separate form if it differed in handshape, movement, or place of articulation while retaining the same meaning. For each sign, the documentation included the source in which it appeared, the number of occurrences, the signing individual’s status (Deaf or hearing — e.g., CODA, PJM interpreter), and their region of origin, when such information was available.
An important task of the documentation team was to record signs that are actually used by PJM users. For this reason, the number of times each sign appeared across various sources was noted. A threshold value was established: a minimum of five occurrences in different source materials or five occurrences in the PJM Corpus, which is a rich and balanced collection of utterances by Deaf individuals from various regions of Poland. A sign that appeared five or more times in the documentation was considered sufficiently represented.
This review of diverse language data enabled the documentation of sign language forms currently in use. The dictionary represents the most comprehensive collection of PJM signs in the fields of law and medicine to date. Additionally, it is supplemented with metadata, including information such as the number of times a given sign appears in the source materials. This allows for an assessment of the frequency and prevalence of specific PJM lexemes.