nondominant handshapes

[Mark A. Mandel]

Oops; I.R. had already answered my question.

So it seems to me that in these cases, as with ASL CHOOSE, the
morphology of the base hand is transparent even if not productive. If
that is so, I would expect the exceptional base handshape to be more
stable than it would be otherwise. For example, marked base handshapes
that are alphabetic components in initialized signs should tend to
change to less-marked handshapes more than this L and V would.

-- Mark A. Mandel

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Ingvild Roald wrote:

#>From the non-linguist in Norway again: There are a number of signs, some
#of wich are well-established, that uses the L handshape for the
#non-dominat hand. They are AUDIOGRAM, STATISTICS,  and several more
#mathematical and special signs. The L of the non-domninat hand represents
#the two axis of a graph, or the lower (left) corner of a graph like an
#audiogram.