[sw-l] History of Symbol Development

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
May 6, 2005

Bill Reese wrote:
> It's not necessary for a new symbol Val.  The simplicity and 
> unambiguity of the current Eyes Open symbol makes them preferable.  I 
> was curious more about the history.  Did you start out with oval eyes?

It is so nice to hear from you again, Bill...

Actually we don't have Oval Eyes...I believe that was your suggestion, 
yesterday...so no... I confess, I did not start with Oval eyes..that 
would be an addition to the symbolset...

The history of the eyes goes back to DanceWriting development in 1973 
and 1974...we were using these exact same Eye symbols from the IMWA 
back in 1974, in DanceWriting documents. As you know, the first signed 
language I wrote was not ASL...it was Danish Sign Language (DSL). And I 
remember using the Eye symbols in that DSL document in 1974 at the 
University of Copenhagen...

The Eye symbols were very simple and could fit into a smaller Facial 
Circle, used in DanceWriting documents...I know I started with the 
first three in this list, and then the others became necessary...the 
eyelashes came from a dance where the dancer was batting her eyelashes 
at her male dance partner...I am not kidding...we placed a trembling 
line near the eyelashes to show the movement..smile...

So the half-open and half-closed came from a combination of the squint 
and the open or closed...I can see this answer is a little 
confusing...the History of symbols is an interesting subject and should 
be documented at some point...when we have nothing to do! Thanks for 
your input Bill...



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 1580 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20050506/9c49af20/attachment.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: unknown.png
Type: image/png
Size: 3210 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20050506/9c49af20/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 3 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20050506/9c49af20/attachment-0001.bin>