Stokoe on noun and verb

[Ulrike Zeshan]

As far as I remember, there was a paper with the title 'Semantic phonology'
by Stokoe in an issue of Sign Language Studies. Don't remember the number,
but I am sure you can find it easily enough. You might also find this idea
expressed somewhere in the book "Gesture and the nature of language" by
Stokoe, Armstrong & Wilcox, but I am not really sure about this, you can
check if you want.

I recently found an interesting explanation/elaboration of the 'semantic
phonology' idea in this reference:
Wilcox, Sherman E. (2002): Stokoe and the Gestural Theory of Language
Origin. In: Armstrong, David, Michael Krachmer & John Vickrey Van Cleve
(eds.): The Study of Signed Languages. Essays in Honor of William C.
Stokoe. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press. pp. 118 - 130.

Regards,

Ulrike


At 05:22 PM 26/05/03 +0900, you wrote:
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>It seems like "cheating" and I feel ashamed.  I should read all the relevant
>literature and find it myself.  But I would really appreciate it if somebody
>could help me.
>
>At the symposium commemorating his 80th birthday at the Gallaudet
>University, Bill Stokoe on the podium said that "the handshape of a sign is
>a noun and the movement of a sign is a verb" or something to that effect.
>
>A good portion of classifiers seem to fit his description.  But I remember
>that he was not restricting his argument only on the classifiers but he was
>talking about "all the signs."  It seems metaphorically and/or
>etymologically true to some extent if not necessarily synchronically and
>practically true.
>
>Can anybody point to where he has written on this?
>
>Thank you very much in advance.
>
>Nobukatsu Minoura
>Linguistics
>Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
>minoura at tufs.ac.jp
>nobum at gol.com
>
>
---------------------------------------
Dr. Ulrike Zeshan
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
Institute for Advanced Study
La Trobe University
Victoria 3086, Australia
ph. +61-3-94796420
fax +61-3-94673053
u.zeshan at latrobe.edu.au
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