Ordering Signs

Thu Nov 26 15:57:35 UTC 2009

SignWriting List
November 25, 2009

Hello Charles, Trevor and Gerard -
Thank you for your wonderful messages...I do appreciate them. And  
please know, Charles, that whatever system of ordering you prefer, I  
respect and admire. It sounds like your ideas are very close to  
mine...that is what I already have established in SignBank and  
SignPuddle and in the ISWA...I have not read your recent messages  
carefully, because I need rest, but at a glance it appears it is the  
same as what we have already established...so we are are on the same  
wave length......but I promise I will do everything in my power to  
make everyone feel at peace about this topic after the weekend is  
over...I hope you don't mind that I take a vacation for the next four  
days? I am very over tired and have been working long hours and I need  
a break...Will you be celebrating Thanksgiving, Charles? I hope so...

So I promise I will be back on the List happy and active on Monday...

And I hope that all of you too can take a break and enjoy the holiday,  
or just enjoy the weekend -

Have a splendid day everyone -

Val ;-)

-----------

On Nov 25, 2009, at 11:08 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> Given that SignWriting is a recent invention and, given that thought  
> has been given by the creators of the scripts to collation, there  
> can be and there is a sorting order that is defined on the level of  
> the script. I have learned about its existence in the past but the  
> precise details escape me. I am sure that either Steve or Valerie  
> will be able to fill us in after their thanksgiving celebration.
> Thanks,
>       Gerard
>
> 2009/11/26 Charles Butler <chazzer3332000 at yahoo.com>
> I would agree that they don't HAVE to be, particularly with signed  
> languages that don't have the same character set, but I feel that  
> there ought to be a universal ordering system that has some logic to  
> it (straight, curved, bent, crossed) that would be a natural  
> progression through the handshapes, ditto with lines and curves,  
> facial expressions, etc.  It's the whole corpus that would be in  
> order, so that if a handshape is used, one knows where it is, if it  
> is not, it is skipped.  English and Spanish both use the Roman  
> alphabet, and though English does not have a ch, an ll, there is an  
> order that can be compared sound for sound.
>
> Charles
>
> From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
> To: SignWriting List <sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu>
> Sent: Thu, November 26, 2009 12:19:14 AM
> Subject: Re: [sw-l] SignWriting on Bing - Improvements to Ordering  
> Signs
>
> Hoi,
> Sorry, but you are wrong. SignWriting is currently not part of  
> Unicode and, it would be in an associated standard, the CLDR where  
> you would find the information about the collation or sorting order  
> of languages using in SignWriting. As it is, the collation of  
> languages using the Latin script each have their own collation  
> because they are not the same. The Dutch collation has a character  
> that is nowadays written with two characters, "ij" tha has its place  
> after the "w" for instance. Consequently the collation or sorting  
> order CAN be the same for every sign language written in  
> SignWriting, it however does not need to be that way.
> Thanks,
>      Gerard
>
> 2009/11/25 Trevor Jenkins <bslwannabe at gmail.com>
> Hi Charles,
>
> I think the exact opposite! It is not that SignWriting (or HamNoSys  
> or Stokoe) needs to accommodate Bing, Google, Wolfram Alpha or so  
> later search engine. Instead the search engines need to change to  
> accommodate SignWriting (and everyother non-Latinate script). We  
> should not change the order in which signs are transcribed -- we do  
> not alter the order of written lexemes so that search engines can  
> retrieve web pages or emails. What we do need is for the present and  
> all future search engines to be capable of searching on inflected  
> sign forms (for example using the Stokoe classification of  
> handshape, orientation, location, movement, repetition). It is us as  
> users who impose order on lexems whether signs or words.
>
> We could be consistent in the way that we write each SignWriting  
> symbol in the same way that there is a convention for how Stokoe is  
> written generally following.location, handshape, movement,  
> orientation, repetition and alterations as we describe the full sign.
>
> The ISWA will prove sufficent for Bing, Google, Alpha, Yahoo!, etc  
> to retrieve on because it is part of Unicode. But let's not make  
> their lives easier at the expense of making our own more difficult.  
> We have better things to do than help Microsoft, Google, Wolfram or  
> Yahoo! fleece us.
>
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Charles Butler <chazzer3332000 at yahoo.com 
> > wrote:
> Hello Folks,
>
> Although I don't know how to change Bing, I'm glad that the system  
> footnotes my article, written back in 2001, on an ordering system  
> for Sign Writing.
>
> http://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs1/sw0066-SW-Journal-Butler.pdf
>
> I believe that we need to fine-tune the system so that the order of  
> handshapes follows logically, not simply as they are put into the  
> system, as having the articulated fingers starting straight, then  
> together, then curved, then bent, then crossed, seems logical but  
> because of the order of creation of a given handshape in the  
> historical progression of the ISWAthat sometimes does not follow.
>
> Ordering of the system now simply follows the order of the coding,  
> so that signs using the same articulators can be put into a system.   
> The sign-shape-sequence which I have been trying to include or edit  
> all the signs I find to include, follows the glyphs in sequence  
> order internal to a sign.
>
> 1) Right hand (by hand group, sub-hand group, orientation, rotation)
> 2) Left hand (by hand group, sub-hand group, orientation, rotation)
> 3) Right hand contact (touch, grasp, brush, rub, in-between)
> 4) Left hand contact (touch, grasp, brush, rub, in-between)
> 5) Right hand location (include face or body) (location on the face,  
> location on the body)
> 6) Left hand location (include face or body) (location on the face,  
> location on the body)
> 7) Right hand movement (straight, curved, compound)
> 8) Left hand movement (straight, curved, compound)
> 9) Right hand speed (prosody) (slow, fast, smooth) There are signs  
> in LIBRAS where the only difference is the speed of the sign)
> 10) Left hand speed (prosody) (slow, fast, smooth)
> 11) Facial expression (I have no idea how to order facial expressions)
> 12) Body posture (there are signs in LIBRAS where the only  
> difference is a posture)
>
> Now that we have a sufficiently large corpus, I would propose we use  
> this system for some experiments to see how clearly it actually  
> works.  The only change I would put in might be in defining 1) as  
> "Dominant Hand" and 2) as "non-Dominant Hand" but there are many  
> signs such as "WITH" in ASL that have no clearly dominant hand, so  
> that it might be simpler to continue with "right-hand dominant".
>
>
>
> Charles Butler
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> -- 
> Regards, Trevor.
>
> <>< Re: deemed!
>
>
>
>
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