use of sign language in Jordan

[Dan Parvaz]

> Where you argue that experts have a different vocabulary, it helps when
> their definitions are readily available and are unambiguously defined.
> Without this they are like a secret cabal that do mysterious things that
> nobody should try to understand and where the application is .. academic.


Then it helps to look at a real encyclopedia:
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9355077

Okay, that sounded more snobbish than I intended -- I use Wikipedia as much
as the next nerd. But the major difference between conventional
encyclopedias (lohipediae?) and the wiki-wiki variety is that  the former
uses acknowledged experts to edit the entries.

Iconicity seems to have an equivalent in tonality. Tonality is captured in
> alphabetic systems just fine.


Do you mean the tones (e.g. in Mandarin) are iconic? To my knowledge, tones
are usually represented with a small set of symbols (often diacritics). A
small collection of relative changes in pitch (often 10 or fewer) does not
capture the richness of imagic iconicity in signed languages (alphabets
capture diagrammatic iconicity just fine).

-Dan.
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