nondominant handshapes

[Mark A. Mandel]

On Tue, 23 Mar 2004, Christopher Miller wrote:

#Here are a couple of exceptional non-dominant passive handshapes I can
#think of in ASL:
#
#CHOOSE with a /V/ handshape; BE-ABSENT/SKIP-CLASS with an open /8/
#
#Neither of these seems to behave as a distinct morpheme at least
#synchronically.

I remember noticing at least SKIP-CLASS in grad school.

Which recalls to me that I wrote a paper back then in which I tried to
create an analysis of Battison Type 3 signs* in which the nondominant
handshape was not completely specified, but rather resulted from other
specifications, mostly Region of Contact and maybe one or two very basic
handshape features. In that analysis, SKIP-CLASS would have had the
nondominant specifications
        Handshape: +open
        ROC: fingertip
 which together with the movement and orientation specs would have
effectively generated open-8 as an allophone of 5.

-- Mark A. Mandel