AW: [sw-l] Re: AUSTRALIA Sign for Australia - black line etc

[Stefan Wöhrmann]

Hi Valerie and everybody, -

sorry for the delay -

first of all - You are right Valerie - of course this line is not a shoulder
line -- on the other hand it isn´t a marker for a noun either (smile)

Well what is it? ha ?

Valerie your guess is almost correct - ..

When I started to learn SW in 1999 I followed an idea of James Shepard-Kegl
to underline proper names -

In the meantime we get so used to it and I am still convinced that this is a
wonderful support for any fast and easy reading of SW-documents.

Once you get this information - that it is a proper name of a place or
person - it is not your fault if you do not know this sign. So you need
additional information ... in order not to get confused with other signs
that will mislead you. More of that You can ask yourself whether you know
what person, town, river, country the scribe is signing about.


Ingvild and Valerie - I would like to swear (smile) that there has been
never ever the chance of any confusion with shoulder lines or punctuation -
if the reader is informed about the strategy.

Valerie wrote: " I personally would never underline a sign like that,..."
...
" So I actually did not like that line underneath to show nouns,
because I don't think, that in everyday documents we underline or
mark the parts in a sentence...that is more for the classroom...for
Deaf children..."

I feel confused!

Perhaps in my ears of a foreigner this is a pretty dramatic refusal - almost
kind of devaluation

Hm - ok - Somehow I feel a little bit sorry to practice a spelling-style
that is so much against your attitude.

But it works so wonderfully. And I guess not only within the field of deaf
education ;-))


Stefan ;-))


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
[mailto:owner-sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu] Im Auftrag von Valerie Sutton
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 2. Juni 2005 18:14
An: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Betreff: Re: [sw-l] Re: AUSTRALIA Sign for Australia - black line etc

SignWriting List
June 2, 2005

Ingvild Roald wrote:
> The full black line should be the shoulder line seen from 'behind'. If
> seen from the top, I thought there should be either a beak in the line
> (like there is for the handshapes), or a circle representing the
> head. Or
> am I wrong?

Hello Everyone, Ingvild, Lucyna, Antony and Stefan -
I didn't want to answer Lucyna's question about why Stefan placed a
line underneath all his signs in the attached example, because I
assumed Stefan would answer the question...but now I feel I should
step in...

Years ago, James Shepard-Kegl in Nicaragua, and Stefan in Germany,
started using a line underneath any sign that is a noun, or a proper
name. The reason? I believe it was because they are teaching Deaf
children and they needed a way to teach grammar to their students.
And since they were using SignWriter DOS and typing SignWriting from
left to right, the line was not confused with other punctuation or
shoulders...

I personally would never underline a sign like that, because I write
in vertical columns, and those lines could be misunderstood as the
Period, or end of sentence marking...And I agree, Ingvild, that it
could be confused with Shoulder lInes too...

So I actually did not like that line underneath to show nouns,
because I don't think, that in everyday documents we underline or
mark the parts in a sentence...that is more for the classroom...for
Deaf children...

So this is Stefan's diagram...it shows signs written for his Deaf
students, with underlining to show nouns...

Stefan - if I have misunderstood what you wanted, please forgive!