use of sign language in Jordan

[GerardM]

Hoi,
I always love it when people insist that words have another meaning because
of it being officially something else. The consequence of giving a word a
different meaning from what everybody else understands by it means by it is
that communication breaks down.

So I had another look at the definitions that can be found on the Internet..

Wordnet about alphabet: "a character set that includes letters and is used
to write a language"
Wikipedia about alphabet: "An alphabet is a complete standardized set of
letters—basic written symbols—each of which roughly represents a phoneme of
a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the
past."
Several programming sites: "The characters of a given language, arranged in
a traditional order; 26 characters in English."

Wikipedia does not know "featural writing system" but "featural alphabet"
and defines it as "an alphabet
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet>wherein the shapes of the
letters are not arbitrary, but encode phonological
features <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinctive_feature> of the phonemes
they represent." I cannot find a definition for "featural writing system" on
the Internet.

Now Wikipedia seems to be consistent in associating an alphabet with
phonology and sign language does not have phonemes. However when you read
about phonemes on Wikipedia, it defines a phoneme as "the smallest unit of
speech that distinguishes meaning" and on phonology it says "The principles
of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of sign
languages <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language>, even though the
phonological units are not acoustic. The principles of phonology, and for
that matter, language, are independent of
modality<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modality_%28semiotics%29>because
they stem from an abstract
and innate grammar <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar>".

To me it follows that in the Wikipedia definition of alphabet, the word
"spoken" should be replaced by "expressed" and then all definitions agree
that the word alphabet can be used for SignWriting. The notion of "featural
writing system" expresses an attribute of a writing system/alphabet and I
can imagine that an implementation of one of these other systems could be
featural in nature as well.

Thanks,
     Gerard



On 9/27/07, Albert Bickford <albert_bickford at sil.org> wrote:
>
> Technically, SignWriting would be classified as a featural writing system,
> like Korean Hangeul (sic?), not an alphabet.  The first clue is the fact
> that there are about 25,000 symbols in the system, which is a huge
> inventory
> for an alphabet, indeed, much larger than a syllabary and getting close to
> the size of inventory needed for a logographic system.  But actually,
> there
> are a lot of similarities between symbols, and in that way it is quite
> unlike a logographic system, because all of these symbols are highly
> analyzable.  For example, each handshape has 96 symbols, which represent
> various orientations of the same symbol (rotations, reflections,
> shadings).
> Basically the same conventions are used for representing these 96
> different
> variants of every handshape.  (That's a bit oversimplified, I know, which
> people who know the system will recognize, but to a large extent it is
> true.)  Similarly, symbols for handshapes can be decomposed into finer
> sub-symbols that represent individual fingers and other parts of the hand.
> So, specific features of the phonology are represented by a specific
> aspect
> of each symbol, and there is a lot of consistency across the whole
> system--this is one of the things that makes SignWriting fairly easy to
> learn. To put it another way: each "symbol" in the SignWriting alphabet is
> analyzable into smaller parts that correspond to specific phonological
> features--hence it is clearly a "featural" system, not an alphabet.
>
> Of course, when speaking to non-linguists (as people have to do in order
> to
> interest ordinary people in using SignWriting), the fine distinctions
> between syllabaries, abjads, abugidas, featural systems, etc. and
> alphabets
> are going to cause people's eyes to glaze over.  So, accepting the fact
> that
> the term 'alphabet' has a broader, looser sense among non-linguists,
> something akin to "an organized system for representing a language based
> primarily on how it is pronounced", I certainly have no objection when
> people talk about a SignWriting "alphabet".  But, within the context of a
> fine classification of different types of writing systems (the question
> Kathy originally asked), the term "alphabet" in its technical sense isn't
> appropriate--SignWriting is clearly a featural system.
>
> Albert Bickford
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Valerie Sutton" <sutton at signwriting.org>
> To: "A list for linguists interested in signed languages"
> <slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu>
> Sent: September 26, 2007 8:10 PM
> Subject: Re: [SLLING-L] use of sign language in Jordan
>
>
> > On Sep 26, 2007, at 5:46 PM, Steve Slevinski wrote:
> >> By alphabet I mean an ordered list of symbols. ...
> > Kathy -
> > To add to what Steve explained, SignWriting is considered to be an
> > alphabet, because we write the way the body looks while we sign, so
> > it can be either phonetic or phonemic, depending on how much detail
> > the writer chooses to write...
>
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