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From:
Shepard-Kegl Date: Thu Dec 16, 1999 5:59 am Subject: Re: writing compounds | ||||||||
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Just browsing through my glossary here, I am looking for a pattern (of sorts). I think we have been hyphenating where compounds might be misinterpreted in written form. For example, the sign for divorce is fairly long and, broken down, is the sign for marriage plus cut and apart. Is it a compound? We surely do not use any hyphens when we write it. Then, there is a sign for "farm cooperative" which is formed by AREA + COOPERATION, but there's no hyphen here, either. There are two signs for farmer which are formed in wholly different ways, but are quite synonymous. The second is formed by FARM plus MAN (or FARM plus WOMAN, I suppose). There is a hyphen in this instance, as we often use in compounds formed with MAN or WOMAN. Of course, I can't truthfully say, "This is what the Nicaraguan Deaf do" because when it comes to SW, I personally have a great deal of input. As I recall, the problem came up when we prepared "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", since the boy and the farmers appeared as subject and object in the same sentences. BOY is CHILDMAN and FARMER is FARMMAN, and it got a little confusing with the sign MAN appearing so much. The hyphen seemed to make the reading more comprehensible. We ran into a similar situation with a story about female and male pirates, and the hyphens really helped. (The language uses determiners and body shifts and head tilts, etc., as well, but the hyphens seemed to aid the readers.) Eventually, the Deaf students will become sufficiently self-assured that they will assume greater control over the direction and evolution of SW as the writing system for their language. I think you can appreciate how difficult my task is. I have to capture the language with SW, but I cannot permit my SW writing conventions to affect the language. Patience, patience. -- James | ||||||||
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