"finalized" signs

[RL Sutton-Spence, Deaf Studies]

Hello Rachel,

Is there something about being called Rachel and being interested in
fingerspelling, do you think?

I did my PhD on the role of the manual alphabet in BSL and have similar
(but different, of course, what with us being two-handed and all)
findings to yours.  I, too, found that the form of the manual letter
dictates if you are likely to use it or not.

Might you be interested in a little exchange on this matter?

Rachel

On Sun, 6 Feb 2000 14:36:57 -0500 Rachel Channon <rcrain at WAM.UMD.EDU>
wrote:

> I wrote a paper (1992) about initialized signs in ASL, which  looked at the
> judgments of one native signer to about 450 different initialized signs. The
> paper concluded as follows: (Underlining indicates the letter of the gloss
> used as the handshape).
>
> .....This study shows that the ideal initialized sign would appear to have
> the following characteristics:  It is a noun, and preferably a proper noun.
> The meaning of the sign is not iconic: it is not easily pointed to or easily
> shown by drawing or example. The first letter of the English gloss is used
> for initialization and the gloss is 9 or more letters long.  The signer does
> not wish to fingerspell it and does not know another sign which he/she
> considers equivalent in meaning.  Preferably it is a one-handed sign, made
> in space.  If it is a two-handed sign, both hands are initialized,  only one
> handshape occurs on either hand, and it is made with the hands in contact
> with each other.  The initial handshape is N, I, E, or D.  Some good
> examples might be: INSURANCE, INFECTION, EASTER, and DEMOCRACY.
> Furthermore, the good initialized sign watches its company, and does not
> appear with too many of its fellows.
> The worst initialized signs have the following characteristics:
> They are verbs, adjectives or pronouns.  The meaning is easily demonstrated
> through pointing or drawing.  The first letter of the gloss is not used for
> initialization, and the gloss is very short, less than 5 letters.  The
> signer prefers to fingerspell it and/or knows another sign considered
> equivalent in meaning.  It is a two handed sign where the weak hand is not
> initialized, and more than one handshape occurs on either or both hands.
> There are multiple locations, such as a sign that moves from the body to
> face or body to arm, or it is located on the face.  The initial handshape is
> O, W, R or M.  Some examples of unacceptable initialized signs would be
> *MARVEL, *ROT, *RICE, *WELL, *MAIL, *ORBIT and *THEY.
> Perhaps the most interesting findings were that initialized signs are more
> appropriate as nouns, and for naming concepts that are not iconic.  These
> signs are at the opposite pole from classifier predicates which are strongly
> verbal, spatial, and iconic.  As Padden (1991) remarks, fingerspelling is
> also more acceptable for nouns.  This suggests that the influence of the
> surrounding hearing, English culture is most easily assimilated or borrowed
> from in the specific grammatical category of nouns....
>
> Clearly there are exceptions to each of these tendencies.  For example,
> THURSDAY is an initialized ASL sign which has two letters as handshapes, and
> one of these is not the first letter of the gloss .  The finalized and
> medialized signs that people have been mentioning like TEXAS  are other
> examples.  It seems to me that what makes these forms acceptable is that
> there is another equally important sign in the same semantic domain (such as
> TUESDAY)  which is also initialized and has already grabbed the first
> letter.  Both days of the week and names of cities have a pattern in ASL of
> being initialized, so there is a bias within these word groups  in favor of
> initialization and against homonymy which overcomes the constraints against
> medialization and finalization, etc.  (No doubt, one could put this in
> formal Optimality Theory terms as well.)
> Rachel Channon
>

----------------------
RL Sutton-Spence, Deaf Studies
Rachel.Spence at bristol.ac.uk