searching for some ASL signs

[Don & Theresa G]

> I'm pretty sure I have seen a sign for 'atom'. It's been a long time, but
I
> believe it was:
>
>      nondominant fingerspelling "A", neutral space, thumb-edge uppermost
>      dominant fingerspelling "A" circling it
>
> So far it looks a lot like YEAR, but I *think* the circling movement was
in an
> approximately horizontal plane, distinguishing it from the sagittal (i.e.,
> vertical-front-back) plane of the movement of YEAR.
>
> The derivation is apparently the traditional "planetary" model of the
atom, with
> electrons circling the nucleus, plus initialization, producing Type 2 in
> Battison's typology of two-handed signs (non-neutral handshape on passive
> nondominant hand; by Symmetry Condition, same as dominant handshape).
>
>    Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist and Manager of Acoustic Data

Mark:

Your description sounds like an "invented" or "ad-hoc" sign developed for
use in the classroom.  While it does seem to conform to Battison's typology
for ASL, I would be leery of accepting it as an ASL sign.  The "A" handshape
alone in the sign suggests to me it is an initialized sign (although
admittedly, the "A" handshape is one of the 5 basic handshapes).  My own
intuition is, if one were to develop an ASL-based sign for "atom", it would
be based on a classifier, probably using the "F" handshape and the sign
would be more iconically representative of an atom's (or its electron's --
are those the ones that move around the nucleus? or was that the protons?)
movements.

One point of my article was to try to discourage the use of these
"invented"/initialized or "ad-hoc" signs, since they are not understood or
known outside of the limited classroom community, and the students don't
learn to use the spelling of these words in the natural context, or cannot
spell the words when the sign is not understood by a conversational partner.

--Don Grushkin