ASL fingerspelling

[Theresa B. Smith]

Agreeing to the suggestion of elocutionary emphasis and adding the
observation that it is also a function of registet, i.r. it is more
likely to occur in more formal Signing.  No, I do not agree that it might
be a "more English" form of fingerspelling.


Theresa B. Smith, Ph.D.
American Sign Language Interpreting School of Seattle (ASLIS)
e-mail:  theresasmith at juno.com

On Sun, 14 Feb 1999 15:37:40 -0500 Tane Akamatsu <tanea at ibm.net> writes:
>Just so I'm clear on what you mean, I will make a few assumptions.
>First of
>all, I assume you mean "with their non-dominant hand beneath their
>dominant
>hand" to account for left-handed signers.  I also assume you mean that
>the
>non-dom hand is lax, just below the wrist of the dom hand, perhaps
>with only
>the index finger actually making contact with the dom arm?  I am
>further
>assuming you are not talking about mirror fingerspelling.
>
>Having said that, I think it's a stylistic difference, not related to
>ASL/Signed English or city by city (or I've been only in cities where
>both are
>used, which is highly unlikely).  I think that the function of the
>non-dominant hand is to "support" the dominant hand, not physically,
>but
>elocutionarily (is that a word?) for emphasis,  to call visual
>attention to
>the particular fingerspelled word, almost as if the non-dom hand is
>saying
>"look here, this is important".
>
>It is possible you might find it more often in English-based signing
>or
>contact signing, just because of the nature of the lexical choices one
>might
>make.
>
>Tane Akamatsu
>
>Michael Hamm wrote:
>
>> Hi, all. I notice some people fingerspelling here in the States with
>their
>> left hands beneath their right, and some without. Is this an ASL /
>Signed
>> English difference? or a city-to-city difference? or what? Thanks.
>>
>> Michael Hamm
>> BA, Math, Jan. '01
>> msh210 at nyu.edu
>> http://pages.nyu.edu/~msh210/
>

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