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From:
joe martin Date: Thu Apr 5, 2001 8:30 am Subject: A misconception | ||||||||||||
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A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that terms like "phonetic" and "phonology" only refer to spoken language. After all, the "phon-" of these words comes from Greek--it's the Greek word for sound. Since SignWriting doesn't represent sounds, people think it can't be a phonetic writing system. The fact is though, SignWriting is phonetic, and is more phonetic than most writing. Phonetics and phonolgy are in all languages. They are simply the smallest parts and the way these smallest parts get put together. When these words were invented, the only languages people knew about used sounds for their smallest parts. So that's where the names came from. But today we know of languages (like ASL) whose smallest units aren't sounds--they still have phonology like any other language. SignWriting represents that. The "phon-" words refer to abstract units, not actual movements or sounds or whatever. If space aliens turned up, they might do phonology with colors or radio waves. When we say that sign language isn't phonological or phonetic, (or, like below, that it is so only metaphorically) we are saying that it is not language. Of course the truth is that it is, and also that SignWriting is a highly phonetic-- and very sophisticated--writing system. We should give it credit for that. --------------------- Sat, 31 Mar 2001 20:52:43 +0300 >of sign languages. At the same time, SignWriter shares with >other transcription systems a structured representation of the sign, >i.e. >a sign is the combination of ("phonological" or "phonetic"- a >metaphor >from spoken language linguistics) features. > | ||||||||||||
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