LL-L "Deaf culture" 2004.06.23 (08) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * 23.JUN.2004 (08) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Rules & Guidelines: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Server Manual: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html
Archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8) [Please switch your view mode to it.]
=======================================================================
You have received this because you have been subscribed upon request.
To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
text from the same account to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or
sign off at http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================
A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
=======================================================================

From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Deaf cultures" [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Deaf culture
>
> I am particularly fascinated by signed poetry and song.  The few times I
> watched the Seattle Men's Chorus (http://www.seattlemenschorus.org/)
perform
> I was more focused on the choir's sign language interpreter than on the

Hmmm, well...! This is a very "hearing" thing, I would say. Since the
structure of sign languages are quite foreign to the structure of the
singing language, you can't really sign along with a song without mangling
the language.

On the deaf programmes on British TV, particularly around Christmas when
some carol singing is in order, we sometimes see a "deaf choir" where the
signers sign along with the words of the carol. The signing tends to follow
the order of the English words, making it very linear or "flat" and
grammarless, and I generally find the whole performance as dull as
dishwater, and quite often rather annoying, I mean:

"Hark the herald angels sing"?

Surely this should be:

"Behold, the herald angels sign"?

Of course after the performance the deaf TV presenters say things like,
"Thanks to the Humbugton Christmas Choir. I really enjoyed that." I once
asked a deaf BBC presenter what she really thought of signing choirs. She
said, "I don't see the point." Then next Christmas she was on TV, "Thanks to
the..."

In my experience deaf choirs often have a hearing person as the driving
force behind them, either a hearing churchgoer who signs, or a minister who
is determined to get deaf people involved. I think hearing people who find
this sort of thing wonderful do so partly because they're enjoying the
music, and partly because they don't realise that the signing isn't really
doing anything meaningful.

As for the "Behold, the herald angels sign" kind of translation, I don't
think you see this in signed song, but you do see deaf people borrowing
idiom from English in this way, eg, "In one eye and out the other", "My
hands are sealed", and "Wash your hands with soap!"

> > However, sign language poets tend to make better use of the three
> channels,
> > sometimes developing special classifiers (cf Navajo?)
>
> This is something I've long thought offered itself to sign language, as to
> non-phonal written languages like Chinese.  In Chinese, there is a certain
> set of classifying glyphs (214 in most systems), known as "radicals," that
> can be used as characters in their own right but in conjunction with other
> glyphs (denoting sound or semantic hints) can make up new characters.  For
> example, the character for 'fish' (?) may serve as a classifier for all
> names of fish and other aquatic animals (e.g., ? 'squid', ? 'abalone', ?
> 'eel', ? 'cod') and also things associated with these (e.g., ? 'fin') or a
re
> considered similar (e.g., ? 'crocodile').  All the above have phonological
> information added to the radical, though the right-hand part of the

I don't think this is the same as classifiers in signed languages, although
signed languages do use a technique like this for borrowing from spoken
languages. For example, because there's no written tradition is sign
languages, people don't generally know signs for distant towns and cities.
While fingerspelling is often considered the "correct" way of using an
English word in BSL, this is not popular for long words and rather than
fingerspelling "Edinburgh", say, a deaf person in the south of England might
instead sign "Scotland" while mouthing the word "Edinburgh". Classifying it
as something to do with Scotland gives the lipreader the necessary context
to guess the word.

This technique is particularly widespread in German Sign Language. Perhaps
because many German words take so long to spell?

> character for 'abalone' may be both phonological and semantic, denoting
> 'envelop' or 'encapsule', as does ? for 'flounder': an ancient phone as
well
> as the meaning 'leaf' (= 'flat').  Using this method, you can create some
> sort of visual semantic theme that strikes the reader right away and sets
> the tone, so to speak.  I can imagine that this would lend itself
> excellently to signing.

This is beginning to sound more like sign language classifiers. Classifiers
in sign languages arise from the use of proforms. Proforms, as I've
explained, are handshapes that stand in place of other signs, just as
pronouns stand in place of nouns. Thus a flat hand with fingers together in
BSL is a proform standing for something flat, or useful to think of as flat,
such as a car, lorry, van, wall, ceiling, sheet of paper or book.

Classifiers are subsets of these: this proform when used to represent a car,
lorry, van &c is called the "vehicle classifier" but when it's used to
represent sheets of paper or books it might be called the "page classifier"
and so on.

In this way you might sign "I was driving along with a lorry behind me" by
signing "My car" and then using the flat left hand as the vehicle classifier
to represent the car, and then signing "lorry" and positioning the flat
right hand behind the left hand to show both vehicles as classifiers. You
can then describe the further adventures of the lorry and car using the
classifiers alone.

Often an object has such a distinctive classifier that you don't need a sign
for it at all. For example, the fist with thumb and pinkie sticking out is a
proform for things with two sticky-out bits, but in practice it's mostly
used for the aeroplane classifier and the telephone classifier, so actual
signs the nouns "aeroplane" and "telephone" don't really exist because you
can't really confuse an aeroplane with a telephone, so the classifiers alone
are sufficient. However, things like the vehicle classifier can also be used
alone, because the motion of the sign is often sufficient when you're not
worried about describing the exact type of vehicle.

It's the use of classifiers like this (plus facial expression and body
movement) that often puzzle non-signers with the sheer amount of information
that's sometimes given with a single sign. Phrases like "the aeroplane crash
landed upside down and slid along the runway", "could you two shift over a
bit?" and "the tree snapped, shivered and crashed to the ground"  each only
take a single sign to express.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Deaf culture

Thanks for your interesting clarifications, Sandy.

Just to P.S. the Chinese "radical" thing again, I ought to add that the
apparently earliest way they were put together to form new characters was
without sound indication and without categorization.  This type of character
can be found in the earliest unearthed artifacts, especially on cow bones
used for Shamanist devination.  Examples are 好 (< 女 woman + 子 child) 'good',
'love', 閃 (< 門 door + 人 person) 'glimpse', 'dodge', 'flash by', and 溺 (< 水
water + 弱 weak) 'drown'.  I wonder if this is similar to some signing
methods.  It seems to me that it may be, given what you said above.

This also leads me to ask how spoken- and written-language-influenced sign
languages are.  Do those in English-speaking communities have English
slants, etc.?  It would seem logical to me that those in Chinese-,
Japanese-, Korean- and Vietnamese-speaking communities would utilize methods
similar to Chinese writing (although Chinese characters are no longer
officially used in Korea and Vietnam).

Are there ever any sound clues outside of finger spelling (like "sounds like
'fish' but is a container" = "dish" in charade fashion), or would that make
signing too spoken-language-dependent?

Just wondering.

Another question (not only for Sandy):

What about signing among minority language speakers.  For example, is or was
there any sign language specific to Lowlands Saxon (Low German) speakers?  I
expect there is not, if there ever was one, which would mean that deaf
people of that language region are split apart by the Dutch-German political
border, using Dutch sign language in the west and German sign language in
the east.  Do speakers of Westerlauwer Frisian use only Dutch sign language
also, or do they have their own variant?  What about Limburgish people?  I
understand that there is only one sign language in the UK now, the Old
Kentish one being extinct (though its derivative Matha's Vineyard Sign
Language of Massachussetts is apparently still used, as is Hawaiian Pidgin
Signing besides American Sign Language in the US.)  So I take it this means
that in England, Wales, Scotland, The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands
only one sign language is used despite diversity in spoken language.  I
furthermore wonder if it is right to assume that both Irish and British Sign
Language are used in Northern Ireland.

Thanks and regards,
Reinhard/Ron

==============================END===================================
* Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
* Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
* Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
* Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
  to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at
  http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================