Dear Val,
You are no doubt right - I am probably foreseeing problems where there
may not be many. Part of the background for my comment was the fact
that several of us here in Europe over the past couple of years have
been paying alot of attention to 'mouthings' (word-like mouth movements)
vs. mouth gestures (like ASL 'pah'). In our Zurich project, we are at
this point making SignWriting notations of mouth gestures but not of
mouthings. So I guess part of my concern in my previous email was that
for non-native signers, it might be difficult to distinguish between
what's a mouthing and what's a mouth gesture in a foreign sign language
(and hence, what needs to be notated and what not).
On the other hand, if, as you do, one notates ALL mouth positions and
movements, then our Zurich team would just need to delete the notations
for what we consider mouthings, keeping only the ones for mouth
gestures.
Penny
Valerie Sutton schrieb:
>
> SignWriting List
> December 21, 2001
>
> QUESTION FROM ZURICH PROJECT:
> >I also wonder if the notation of some grammatical
> >facial expression in a text might require native knowledge of the sign
> >language, as it's not clear that all facial expressions are really the
> >same across all sign languages (especially when mouthing of spoken
> >language words get involved in the mix.) But maybe this hasn't been
> >your experience in notation texts of different sign languages? Maybe
> >I'm creating problems where, in practice, there are none.
>
> VAL'S ANSWER:
> I believe you have native signers signing the story on video?
> Therefore, the facial expressions of the native signer are there for
> us to study...
>
> In my case, I just write what I see on the video. I don't have to
> know the sign language on the video to write the facial expressions I
> see there...
>
> The SignWriting system itself is not based on a prior knowledge of
> any signed language...it records the signs visually without
> judgement, a little like a video does, but it is a writing system,
> and so it has benefits that videos do not.
>
> Of course other people, especially linguists, may make decisions as
> to what is important and what is not important. And that is fine. I
> am sure in time, rules may develop...
>
> But this is your FIRST SignWriting publication in the history of
> Swiss-German Sign Language! I would suggest keeping things very
> simple right now. Don't worry too much. Write the facial expressions
> you can, and we can always analyze it later - ha! ;-)
> --
> Val ;-)
>
> Valerie Sutton
>
>
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>
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