SignWriting List Forum| Message 830 | Previous | Next [ Up Thread ] | Message Index |
|
SignWriting List Forum |
|||
|
|
From:
Joe Martin Date: Thu Jan 7, 1999 5:56 pm Subject: actors | ||||||||
|
Bill--I love your analogy. The writing system is to the language like the actor is to the character. It's perfect; I wish I'd thought of it! Our remaining question was, is Signwriting a different "type" of writing system? I think so; here's why; To a large extent Chinese uses word based writing--every word has a unique symbol. At first glance SW looks like that. But the SW symbol for any word is a combination of parts; handshapes, movement arrows, maybe faces, shoulders...ect. Those same parts combine and recombine in various ways the same as the letters of an alphabet or syllabary. they are the units to look at, rather than the entire symbol. Spoken languages are structured differently from signed ones, and the orthography must consider this. The former are easier;; they consist almost entirely of sequences of a small (typically about 30-40) sounds. (the phonemes) Create one symbol for each sound, write them in rows, and you've got it. Decoding it is easy too. Just "sound it out" by pronouncing each sound in the sequence. Sign languages don't consist of just 30-40 phonemes. As everyone should know each sign consists of a combination of at least four things; handshpae, orientation, location and movement. It's as if you could look in and see the tongue, vocal cords, and velum (the articulators of spoken language) move as we spoke. Phonologists have ways of recording this stuff, and it also is way different from alphabetic writing. They aren't trying to record the end result but the simultaneous movements of the various parts. That is what SignWriting does. SW is different in principle beccause it is recording 4(?) different things simultaneously, with a different set of symbols for each. as I see it, Handshape--the little "hands" Orientation--the shading of the "hands" Location--the spatial relation between the symbols movement--the arrows facial expressions---the little "faces" Spoken language has just one type of unit; a sound, which although it is composed of analogous combinations of articulator movement, can feasibly be represented by one grapheme. To do that with a signed language though would require an near infinite number of symbols (for you mathematicians out there, how many combinations of handshape+(movement in each direction!)+location....never mind) because Signed language has a near infinite number of phonemes. Instead, to write it we need to record the sub-phonemic features, by using the 4? 5? different types of symbols. Not like spoken languages at all. What I want to know is how closely signwriting follows the phonemic structure. I know you can "sound it out".... Yipes!! I have to go to class.......... joe | ||||||||
|
|