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From:
Fernando Capovilla Date: Tue Dec 14, 1999 7:04 pm Subject: writing legs & feet | ||||||||||||
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Hi Cecelia and Valerie, > It is true that over time, signs in ASL have migrated towards the common sign > space. This tendency is natural to all languages. That is what I meant by "evolution". If this is one of the many possible criteria of evolution, and if this criterion may be heuristically applied to other languages, then perhaps it might be possible to "estimate" how old or formalized a language may be. That is, it could be dating technique, something like a type of Carbon 14. Perhaps it is a silly idea, perhaps not.Hi Charles and James. I enjoyed the signs DOG and BILL CLINTON. In BrSL we have other signs such as ABORTION, MENINGITIS, BACKS, HIPS, TIGHS, KNEES, LUNGS, BACKBONE, and SQUIRREL, to name a few, in which the hands clearly extrapolate the signing space.Valerie: our dictionary depits the signs mentioned above (from ABORTION to SQUIRREL), among others. I may be wrong, of course, but my hunch is that as BrSL evolves, we will be able to see those signs migrating more and more to the signing space. That is another purpose of registering a lexicon at a given time and space: It will function as a time capsule, so as to allow watching what happens as time passes. In any event, that hypothesis may only be fully tested by our grandchildren. (That is why writing a dictionary is a generous deed.) :-) > Grin. That and a few OTHER chapters, Fernando! ;-) > > Last year about this time, Fernando asked for a special chapter on > Sequential Finger Movement. Woops...that hasn't been posted yet! > Now I am writing an Introduction on SignWriting for the new Brazilian Sign > Language Dictionary, which will be published in the new year.... > > Gosh. I guess I should get that done first.......or do you want "tapping > the toes on the ground" as a part of the Introduction in the dictionary? > > If so, are there signs like that in the Brazilian Sign Language Dictionary? > I was writing my Intro around entries in the dictionary.... No problem. We would just need a straight introduction as soon as possible, and as systematic and thorough as possible, full of illustrations. :-) > I would never have thought of such an idea, that one language is more > sophisticated than another....To me all languages are valid...they are just > different, that's all. Dear Val, would you say a language "evolves" or just that it "randomly changes over time"? I would say that, despite all random changes over time (that are actually noise instead of signal), there may be some lines of evolution that may be identified (for instance like that from pictograms to Rebus to syllabaries to Greek-Roman alphabet). If we agree on that, would you say that each language is a phenomenon completely particular or that languages may share some features and dimensions? (for instance the strategy they use to represent the sounds of language). In that case, wouldn't you agree it might be profitable to compare the way they change over time along those dimensions? I am not trying to adopt Procustus's maneuver and say that we should adopt the same criteria to all languages. I am just saying that such an heuristic exercise may yield fruitful hypotheses and refreshing discoveries, at least more than those accruing from assuming that each language is a completely separate phenomenon in itself. :-) | ||||||||||||
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