What's the deal with SignWriting?

[Barbara Gerner De Garcia]

What is Madrid Sign Language?  Although I am familiar with various sign
languages, and have spent time doing research in Barcelona, I have not heard
of this language.

Barbara

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu>wrote:

> "Franz Dotter" <Franz.Dotter at uni-klu.ac.at> wrote:
>
> #What is the function of writing? To give us enough information to keep
> spoken
> #or signed language in an "external storage" (external from our memory).
> Again:
> #Not all info, enough to identify (most of) the content.
>
> #Does written material suffice for analysing a language? Hethitian
> linguists
> #would say: Yes, we don't have other sources. Linguists of languages still
> #spoken or signed would say: Writing is always only the second code, go for
> the
> #original one, i.e. real spoken/signed productions.
>
> With respect, I don't think that this addresses Andrew's question. He
> didn't ask
> whether SignWriting was adequate as the only form of data to use for
> analyzing
> signed languages:
>
>  (quoting Andrew)
> #It seems true to me that a SignWriting transcription of an ASL
> #utterance will certainly lack some linguistic and paralinguistic
> #information, but probably no more so than a phonemic (NOT phonetic)
> #transcription of a spoken English utterance will probably lack certain
> #information about phonetic production and prosody.
> #
> #With that in mind, PHONEMIC transcription can still convey a lot of
> #information about English which is useful to linguists, and there are
> #even situations in which written English is sufficient as a medium for
> #recording linguistic data about spoken English.
>
> This is certainly true, for English and for any other living language that
> has a
> written form. As an example of Andrew's last sentence above, consider
> studies of
> word frequency and constructions based on transcribed speech. And in
> practice,
> for many (most?) linguistic endeavors, it is impossible to analyze a large
> corpus of speech without recourse to some form of transcription on the
> spectrum
> between everyday orthography and narrow phonetics.
>
> Andrew's question then was:
>
> #                                how good or bad is
> #SignWriting as a tool for linguistic study? Where does it excel? Where
> #does it fall short? Can people who use it interpret it accurately in a
> #reliable way?
>
> I don't read SSW, but of course I've seen it and I know its basic
> principles.
> And while I can't answer Andrew's question, it doesn't deserve summary
> dismissal. SSW can certainly be useful for many forms of linguistic study
> of
> sign languages. And not only in its present (still evolving) form: the
> International Phonetic Alphabet was originally developed from the Roman
> alphabet, and there are extensions (for disordered speech and non-phonemic
> sounds and qualities in normal speech).
>
> -- Mark A. Mandel
>   Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania
>
> PS: "Hethitian" = "Hittite"?
>
> _______________________________________________
> SLLING-L mailing list
> SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
>
>


-- 
Dr. Barbara Gerner de Garcia, Professor and Chair
Department of Educational Foundations and Research
Gallaudet University
800 Florida Ave NE
Washington, DC 20002-3695

Phone: 202-651-5207
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/slling-l/attachments/20090113/09f30ad2/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
SLLING-L mailing list
SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l