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Hello Valerie. Happy birthday. :-) Hi everybody. I want to reply with one
message to your different posts, if that's no problem.<br><br>
At 00:31 22-2-2005, Valerie Sutton wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">I am sorry I did not realize
your name was Andy...I thought it was Anne because of the email
address...I will be happy to answer your questions..I hope others on the
SignWriting List will jump in and give their two cents too!!
</blockquote><br>
<b>Apologies<br>
</b>It's a Dutch name - Anne - but on the internet and in foreign
countries I use quite often Andy, because I'm a guy. :-) Sorry if it
looks as if I do ask novice questions, I spent a lot of time on your
sites, and did read many things, but wasn't able to pose specific
questions. I also want to apologize for having another goal than you all.
I want to use your expertise in describing a language in a different
modality (gestural) to use in creating an environment for languages in
still another modality (iconic).<br><br>
Thanks for mentioning SSS, I missed it and it's essential for
lexicographically ordering.<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">In the American Sign Language
online dictionary, we have around 3,300 signs...Go look at them...
The German Sign Language Dictionary, in SignWriter DOS, has over 10,000
entries. <br>
...<br>
The sequence of symbols in SignWriting is called the Sign-Symbol-Sequence
or SSS. In the International Movement Writing Alphabet, which is our
entire set of symbols for writing all body movement and all signed
languages, there are 50 groups of symbols.</blockquote><br>
<b>SignWriter Java<br>
</b>SignWriting notation does have to encode for 3,000 - 10,000 signs (on
the basis of "distinctive features" and "double
articulation theory" if I'm right). It's using for that a corpse of
<b>50 symbol groups</b>. A feature-based notation system for spoken
English (10,000 words) would be based on lip movements, tongue position,
amount of air flux... The amount of symbols (per - different - feature)
would be much <b>larger </b>than the alphabet with 26 symbols. The same
problem does exist for an iconic languages (with e.g. 10,000 icons).
<br>
How to work with <b>large sets of symbols</b> (especially composing) is
therefore a very important issue.<br><br>
I saw that in SignWriter Java a normal keyboard is used where the digits
0-9, some extra keys, and the letters asdfghjkl are being used. Actually
I am looking for the <i>theory behind the way the keyboard is used to
access the symbols</i>. Is that investigated?<br><br>
This has also to do with my questions about used conceptual hierarchies
and so on. I see now that the symbols are used as a very large alphabet.
In that way composition of sentences can be done with just adding
(feature) symbols. Searching is in a lexicographical way, not in a
conceptual way. Now - thanks Antônio Carlos - I understand fully what the
consequences are of using a <b>phonetic </b>notation. Besides, with an
<i>iconic* </i>language, I mean a language with <i>pictographic
</i>(iconic) and <i>ideographic </i>parts; similar to a sign language or
a spoken language (with onomatopoetic words). <br><br>
Thank you all for your time!<br><br>
Regards,<br><br>
Andy<br><br>
* If you know a better name, I'm your man. The terms picture language,
visual language, graphical language are all in use or can be
misinterpreted as well<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Anne C. van Rossum<br>
1006916<br>
<a href="http://www.tudelft.nl/">TUDelft</a> -
<a href="http://new.ewi.tudelft.nl/">EWI</a>/<a href="http://academics.its.tudelft.nl/nl/">ITS</a>
- Master <a href="http://msc.its.tudelft.nl/mke/">Media & Knowledge </a><a href="http://msc.its.tudelft.nl/mke/">engineering</a>, Thesis <a href="http://elektron.et.tudelft.nl/~avrossum/study.xml">Iconic Language & Cognitive Psychology<br>
</a><font size=1><x-tab> </x-tab>languages: Nederlands + English + Español; nationality: Dutch; gender: male</font> </body>
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