names of signed languages

[jmacfarl at UNM.EDU]

I agree with Ulrike regarding the assignment of names for signed
languages according to the political country where it is used.

One example of this practice gone bad is the SIL's ethnologue of
languages.  Here, they state that Canadian Sign Language (and
they are not talking about LSQ) is a distinct signed language.  To the
best of my knowledge this is not the case.

On 15 Feb 99, at 11:52, Ulrike Zeshan wrote:
> I would like to suggest to be cautious about assigning the name of a sign
>  language accordinng to the political country where
> it is used, be it based on English (JoSL...) or on the local spoken
> language
>  (LIU...) because it may turn out that the sign
> language used in the neighboring country ot countries is the same. On the
> other
>  hand, there may be regional dialectal
> variation of the sign used to refer to sign language. For example, in some
>  regions of India all five fingers are used for SIGN
> whereas in other regions only three fingers are used in the otherwise
> identical
>  sign. But still we wouldn't want to assign
> different names to these dialects of the same sign language on the basis
> of this
>  variation (which would happen if we were to
> use a transcription of SIGN). The more I think about it, the more
> complexities
>  arise...


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James MacFarlane
University of New Mexico
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