speed of movement in signs

[Tony Wright]

At 06:54 PM 11/14/00 -0700, Dan Parvaz wrote:

>> What about SOON and EXPERT, do they have "other" factors as do PROVE
>> and BOUNCE, or do they ONLY differ with speed??  <snip>
>
>Susan and I have continued this discussion offline, and I believe she's
>talked me into thinking that the "bounce" at the end of PROVE is an
>artifact of the acceleration (actually, I think it stems from the rapid
>deceleration, but I can't really prove that).

Dan, I want to clarify something.  Do you mean that the bounce is an
articulatory artifact of the acceleration--something conditioned by
physical necessity--or that the bounce is a kind of cognitive artifact, a
sort of metaphor to represent speed that may or may not be present in
articulatory reality?

This is a very interesting issue.  My tendency would be to think that the
bounce at the end of PROVE is either (1) a metaphor for putative signing
speed that may not be real in an articulatory sense or (2) a metaphor based
on the image of a thick dossier being dropped down on a surface in front of
a doubting person and bouncing a little, which supplies an emphatic
metaphor of proof.

--Tony Wright