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From:
Charles Butler Date: Sun Oct 4, 1998 2:24 pm Subject: Re: SW | |
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Erin, this is from Charles Butler, one of the old timers. When ASL was first written in Sign Writing it included full body movement, arms, legs, and torso. The system still includes it, it just has not been as strongly emphasized in the current handwriting system. When one is telling a story, one becomes several people, all the parts of the story, so one's shoulders often move to take on different people. Example, the spiritual "Set Down Servant" goes. Set down servant, I can't sit down, Set down servant, I can't set down My heart is so happy that I can't set down. An interpreter must take that simple sequence in sections, with the master looking superior and looking down, and then shifting to show the servant looking up and rather defiant, back and forth. Without body movement, the transcription would not be accurate, but would look as if the interpreter simply looked straight forward and signed, which is NOT the beauty of sign language, nor grammatically correct. One has to add at minimum a shoulder line and neck line to show the shift in characters between the master and the servant. That shoulder and neck line is on the keyboard now, so one could at least get a rough draft of it. Full Mime Writing is a bit more complex, but this may give you a start. |
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