AIHEC Report

[R. Rankin]

> I saw a video made at Ft. Berthold showing various
individuals giving the
sign language sign for a word or command, and then
pronouncing the term in Hidatsa. English sub-titles
were used. It ran for about 15 or 20 minutes.

Thanks for the report; it sounds like a good meeting.
I think the work at Ft. Berthold is especially
interesting.  There are not nearly enough linguists and
Native People documenting the Plains Sign Language.
Among professional linguists, I only know of Brenda
Farnell, whose work with Assiniboine is very good.
Future generations will want to know not only what the
signs for various concepts were but also how they were
strung together in sentences.  This latter is important
because the order of spoken words is often very
differetn in Lakota/Dakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa,
Comanche, Hidatsa and other groups that used the sign
language.  So did they all put the signs in the same
order when they used them, or did they use the order of
the words in their spoken languages?  These questions
and others are important, and I'm glad that some of the
people who can still sign fluently are working on the
problem(s).

Bob Rankin
Univ. of Kansas