Metathesis in signs

[Mark A. Mandel]

Rachel Channon (whose post comes through nice and clean this time! ;-)\  )
says:
>>>>>
     I am surprised and very interested, because there is a group
of signs, call them group A, that move toward the body and have only one
contact point.  They seem to be very simple signs which could be described
by listing their hand and body contact points and handshape and assuming
that moving toward a contact place is the unmarked or default action.  Two
examples are ASL MY and MOTHER.  MY moves toward, and contacts the chest
with the palm of a flat unspread hand.  MOTHER repeatedly moves toward and
contacts the chin with the thumb of a flat spread hand. But if there are
some signs that can move toward or away from a single contact point, then
the descriptions of signs in group A might need to include some indication
of direction such as toward.
<<<<<

If I recall correctly, Stokoe analyzed ASL signs like MY and MOTHER with
/contact/ as their action, and signs that move away from contact with
/contact/ followed by the direction of motion, usually /forward/.

                  Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist
 Dragon Systems, a Lernout & Hauspie company : speech recognition
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com