speed of movement in signs

[Karlin, Ben]

I vote on alternative 1.  It would surprise me if an artifact left over from
an iconic beginning would survive the linguistic shift.

This leads me to a second (and third) question but I'll separate them.

Ben Karlin, St. Louis, MO

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Wright [mailto:Twright at ACCDVM.ACCD.EDU]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 4:21 PM
> To: SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
> Subject: Re: speed of movement in signs
>
>
> 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
>