FW: Encyclopedia of Linguistics

[Adam Schembri]

Daisake & Nobukatsu,

I agree to a certain extent, but if you have a look at what is planned for
inclusion in the proposed encyclopedia, you will notice that much is
missing. As Nobukatsu mentioned, classifiers are not listed, despite being a
morphosyntactic phenomenon attested in a significant number of different
languages.

Why don't we produce our own encyclopedia of signed language linguistics?
Aren't we, as a field, ready for it?

Adam Schembri

>From: Daisuke Sasaki <daisuke at MAIL.COM>
>Reply-To: "For the discussion of linguistics and signed languages."
>      <SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
>To: SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
>Subject: Re: FW: Encyclopedia of Linguistics
>Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 03:39:42 -0500
>
>At 10:01 AM +0200 00.9.12, Nobukatsu Minoura wrote:
> > Dear Colleagues,
> >
> > I think more sign languages should be represented.  Chinese Sign
>Language
> > for the whole Eastern Asia is not enough!  And also, can you think of
> > linguistic phenomena idiosynchratic to sign languages?  Classifiers?
>What
> > else?  Who among the sign language linguists should be in the who's who?
> > William Stokoe?<of course>  Who else?  Let us be contributors to the
> > Encyclopedia of Linguistics.
>
>Nobu, or Minoura-san, you seem to be so excited.  You had a
>coffee at breakfast, didn't you? :-)
>
>But, you will find that Nobu's anger is quite reasonable if
>you look at the web pages of the Encyclopedia.  The first
>page lists the articles covered in the Encyclopedia
>alphabetically, and the second all the topics by subject:
>
>         http://www.fitzroydearborn.com/chicago/lingentryalpha.htm
>         http://www.fitzroydearborn.com/chicago/lingsubjectentry.htm
>
>Caution: The second page is very heavy (280KB).
>
>If you search those pages by a keyword like "sign," this
>encyclopedia only covers the following topics related to
>sign linguistics:
>
> > LANGUAGES     Sign Languages
> > American Sign Language        2000 words
> > British Sign Language 2000 words
> > Chinese Sign Language 2000 words
> > Indian Sign Language  2000 words
> > Signed Languages      3000 words
> >
> > TOPICS        Acquisition
> > Acquisition: Acquisition of Sign Language     1000 words
>
>How about Japanese Sign Language?  Thai Sign Language?
>Korean Sign Language?  Hong Kong Sign Language?  Taiwan Sign
>Language?  Other European sign languages than BSL?  Auslan?
>NZSL?  Or whatever sign languages not listed above?  Does
>this mean that they are not recognized?  I feel like
>concluding that the editors would be linguists of spoken
>languages and that they don't know much about sign languages.
>This kind of thing happening AGAIN?  Alas!
>
>
>Daisuke
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Daisuke Sasaki    mailto:daisuke at mail.com    http://www.daisuke.com/
>Doctoral Student of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin
>----------------------------------------------------------------------

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