Importance of SL phonemes

[Dan Parvaz]

Agreed. And there are some well-established theories/formalisms of
iconity, both within semiotics and linguistics (cognitive grammar,
blended spaces thoery,  etc.), as well as some new ones which are
coming down the pike. I look forward to see a theory which accounts
for the data on a detailed level.

<disclaimer>
The next paragraph is not addressing you, Sonja -- you know better :-)
-- but it is about a trend I'm noticing in the general discourse.
</disclaimer>

While I agree that the older plan of showing how signed languages are
comparable to spoken languages resulted in some misapplication of
formalisms, epithets like "spoken-language model" are sometimes used
to dismiss models without addressing the underlying issues. There are
plenty of reasons of doing so; not many of them are good ones. Just a
thing I've been noticing...

-Dan.

On 10/1/07, Sonja Erlenkamp <sonja.erlenkamp at hist.no> wrote:
> I totally agree with you. What we need is exactly a "theoretical heavy lifting" and I am optimistic that it will show up, may be it is already happening. The past couple of years I have met some "out of the box thinkers" doing research on signed languages and may be one (or all) of them might come up with the lift we need. I am just hoping that we are ready to take up whatever ball they throw at us and at least take a proper look at it and not just "jump out of the way" because we're afraid to get hit by some new and frightening ideas. ;)
> I think we all agree on that iconicity is an important part of signed languages, on the level of single signs as well as in larger structures. In the past 10 years several analyses have shown that it contributes to meaning construction on a large scale. Spoken language descriptions cannot provide us with answers how iconic mechanisms exactly work, because they do not have all these mechanisms (only some of them). I am afraid we have to come up with a model on iconicity ourselves and I know that there are several in the making. :)
>
> All the best
>
> Sonja
>
> -----Opprinnelig melding-----
> Fra: slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu [mailto:slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu] På vegne av Dan Parvaz
> Sendt: 1. oktober 2007 14:25
> Til: A list for linguists interested in signed languages
> Emne: Re: [SLLING-L] Importance of SL phonemes
>
> > 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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