Importance of SL phonemes

[Dan Parvaz]

> As for the officials: I think it is enough to tell them that scientifically spoken are signed
> languages naturally developed, fully grammaticalized languages that - as all other natural
> languages - are part of the cultural and individual identify of their users.

Sounds fine to me. However, if we are going to take the term
"grammaticalized" seriously, then we are obligated to say exactly
*what* kind of order emerges from the process. Does the resulting
system only go down to the morphological level? Even if a phonemic
analysis is hopelessly leaky, does it hold enough water to make
writing possible? I'm thinking of Lindblom et al's work on
self-organization in phonetic inventories. Something constrains, for
instance, handshape inventory... what combination of innate form
("nature") and usage ("nuture") gives us the best model?

BTW, please note that I'm asking these as real, not rhetorical
questions. I'm not married to any particular analysis.

By the same token, what does a term like "iconeme" buy us? Without
doing the necessary theoretical heavy lifting, all this does is put
the problem off. The semantic end of any symbol system -- iconic or
otherwise -- exists in the minds of the user community. We're still
left having to explain why this configuration of parameters and not
some other, equally iconic, arrangement are what obtains in a given
SL.

Cheers,

-Dan.
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