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From:
Steve and Dianne Parkhurst Date: Mon Dec 3, 2001 9:51 pm Subject: Re: Phonemes and Body Movement? | ||||||||||||
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Warm greetings from Spain. I started this message a few days ago and it got stuck in my draft box for a while, sorry. Let me briefly introduce ourselves: We are Steve and Dianne Parkhurst, linguists with SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) working in Spain. We've been here now almost 7 years. I (Steve) took my first SL classes at SCCC a number of years ago. We will be back in the Seattle area sometime in the spring so maybe we can meet you, Leigh. Anyway, as Karen mentioned, there is a difference between phonetics and phonemes. Phonetics typically refers to the study of the inventory of sounds that are used to make up languages. Now the term phonetics has broadened to mean the inventory of the most basic elements of a language, whether they are sounds or handshapes (etc.). There is a universal set of these elements. Let's talk about spoken languages first. There is a way to write all these possible sounds--it is a notation system called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Each language decides to use only a small portion of the overall list. Some African languages use clicks and things that would never occur in English, and the R sound in English is used very rarely in other languages around the world. Once you have narrowed down the inventory of sounds to those that are used in a language like English, you need to decide which of those sounds you really want, or need, to write. Now we are getting into phonemics--those elements that make a difference in meaning. For example, there is a difference between the TH sound in "this" and "thing". For the first one you use your voice, while for the second one you don't. This is the same difference between "bat" and "pat"--the B has voicing and the P doesn't. In English we decide to write B and P differently because if you didn't you would have a hard time telling words like "bat" and "pat" apart. P and B are different phonemes--the use of one or the other changes the meaning of the word. The two THs are technically different phonemes but we treat them like phonetic differences because they rarely make a difference in meaning. In IPA it is possible to write the two different THs but we choose not to when we write in every day use. There is probably a better example but this at least gives you a general idea. Now for SignWriting, I can look at a video and write down every detail about how the sign is done. This is notation. This originally is what Valerie developed--a way to write down any type of movement (and handshape, orientation, location, facial expression, etc.). Now, those of us who are using SW as a writing system take all the possible symbols and make decisions about what is necessary to write and what isn't. I can choose to write every last little detail (phonetic information), or I can choose to leave off some of the detail and yet the fluent signer and reader can still understand the meaning of the sign. Not all the detail is necessary (not all is phonemic--some is just phonetic) The more unnecessary detail I leave off, the faster it is to read (fewer symbols to look at and interpret). But if I leave off important information (phonemic information) then the reader may misunderstand the meaning of the signs and communication breaks down. So, Valerie has developed an international alphabet of symbols that can be used to write any SL. And those of us who use SW as a writing system weed out the phonetic and focus on the phonemic--we take out the unnecessary detail and focus on those things that make communication clearest. A few years ago we visited Valerie in her home and showed her some of the stories in Spanish SL. She could read them without much problem. But every once in a while we would tell her, "actually it is signed like this...". She didn't have the intuition about Spanish SL to know that the way she signed it had no meaning in Spanish SL. A native Spanish SL signer would look at the sign and fill in the missing information and come up with the sign that fit the context of the phrase. Not only that, they wouldn't even realize tha t I had left out some of the detail because the option that Valerie suggested doesn't even exist in their language. Now, there are other notation systems for signed languages: Stokoe, HamNoSys, and dozen or so others. Most of these were developed by linguists who were looking for an IPA for signed languages. To the linguist all the details are important. To the everyday writer and reader those details are less important. Stokoe System and HamNoSys were never intended to be written and read by Deaf people in everyday communication. SW (and DanceWriting), on the other hand, was developed to be written quickly and read quickly and therefore it is ideal for everyday use. Somewhere on the SW web site there is a comparison of SW, Stokoe and HamNoSys. Well, that's my two pesetas' (soon to be two Euros') worth on that topic. If you want to contact us directly you may. I don't often get around to commenting on the list. Hope this helps. If Barbara Bernstein still works at SCCC, give her a warm hello from me. Have a great day, Steve :-) Steve and Dianne Parkhurst | ||||||||||||
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