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From:
Joe Martin Date: Fri Jun 30, 2000 11:47 am Subject: JSL video | ||||||||||||
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for the record, Val asked, regarding the first two signs on the Shyuwa transcription; > Do you feel a facial expression is necessary for this sign? If so, how > would you sign it? My feeling was, no, for the second one, and for the first one, kinda. That is, the guy is looking down, then he looks up, raises his hands and begins to speak. A normal expression to accompany such an activity would be a sort of "OK, here I go" look, which would include raised eyebrows. It seems to me that this is what happened here, rather than a topic marker. (Although I wouldn't argue too strongly.) A couple on signs on he does a clear topicalization, when he holds up his four fingers. That one seems significant, but compared to it, this first brow raise is pretty pallid. So that's why I didn't write it. Then too, the question..."is it neccesary to write it?"....gee, uhhhh...welll.... I can only answer, "Necesary for what?" If we know what he is saying, then we can decide if it means anything, and based on that, write it or not. But when we don't know the language, just being scribes, that seems very hard. Couldn't virtually *anything be significant? ( Westerners are famous for ignoring the tones of Chinese, thus confusing "mother" and "hemp." And I know that when I listen to African languags with "clicks" in them, they don't seem to be part of the speech at all--just intruding background noise.) Maybe in the language I am scribing, what I see as an irrelevant detail might turn out to be some crucial thing like a verb inflection. How would I know? But then, I can't write down every teeny-weeny phonetic detail, either. Oh dear, oh dear. _______________________________________ Joe Martin, Plain Old Ordinary Student Top Left Corner USA | ||||||||||||
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