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From:
Joe Martin Date: Wed May 19, 1999 9:54 am Subject: Re: researching | |
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Hi leslie. My name is joe and i am a Lx grad at Western Washington U in Bellingham WA. here's .02 worth.. On Tue, 18 May 1999, leslie wrote: > > 1.What are the pro's and con's of sign writing? > > 2. Will sign writing effect/change hand signing in any way? Re these two questions, I'm reminded or my perpetual mantra that "ASL is a Language" People seem to pay lip service to that, but don't follow up on the ramifications. It means that it also follows all the rules and processes that all other languages do. For the effects of a language adopting a writing system, consider: Along about the year 90 Irish monks taught the inhabitants of the British Isles to write their language, which later came to be known as English. Seems to have worked out pretty well. > 3. What are the linguistic challenges or ramifications of sign writing? SignWriting is the first writing system ever to catch on somewhat that has been designed to represent non-spoken language. That alone should make it of abiding interest to linguists. There is a lot of harping on the idea of iconicity in writing systems, most of it pretty ill-informed. The idea of a pictograph is well established, but what about a grapheme that represents iconically not the referent itself, but the linguistic sign that stands for that referent. Ain't never been done. For spoken language you have a choice of drawing a picture of a cat, or of some arbitrary symbol to represent the cat. The third choice of drawing a picture of the pattern of sound waves that makes [cat], is not viable. Sonographs come close, in a way, but who can read them!? The fourth choice, detailed drawings of the movements of the articulators, *could* be done, I think, but never has. The closest we've come to that is certain isolated features of the Cree/Inuktitut alphabet, and of Korean Han'gul. (which is considered to be the worlds best writing system. Coincidentally?) In the manual modality, the 3rd and fourth choices are one and the same, and they are emminently feasible. Valerie used it. > 4. Any additional comments.... No, for now I've tortured you enough; but if interested there's more where this came from >:-) joe |
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