What's the deal with SignWriting?

[Andrew Pidkameny]

Franz,

I want to know more about why you claim that Stokoe Notation and
HamNoSys are more appropriate scientific notation systems than
SignWriting. Is it because SignWriting can be produced with varying
levels of precision/abstraction? It would seem that a higher level of
abstraction, as is found in Stokoe Notation and HamNoSys, would make
it more difficult to accurately convey phonetic information. And from
what I've heard, Stoke Notation is at least as imprecise as
SignWriting, as it lacks descriptors for nonmanuals.

What say you?

~Drew

> Then you continue:
> "It can be used in scientific annotation as
> much as any other transcription method and it can be integrated in
> scientific annotations (for instance in combination with time markers or
> annotations)."
> Here I disagree: Scientific transcription always has to represent all the
> features of any behavioral activity demanded/important for/on different, but
> definable levels of abstraction. That means, as long as you want to describe
> production phenomena of language, you have to use a scientific transcription
> (where - for sign languages - you have e.g. the choice between the Stokoe or
> the HamNoSys system, different approaches for different levels of
> abstraction, but scientifically defined). Economic everyday witing does not
> obey this claim. Naturally, as we sometimes use the written language system
> (the writing code) in order to illustrate some facts of language where
> production phenomena are not necessary (e.g. in syntax), you can adopt the
> SignWriting code also for that (often/sometimes enriched with representtions
> of grammatical categories like - for spoken language e.g. "do_3PSG" for
> "does"). But in this method you do not follow the rules of written language
> (be they normative
>  or not) but you only use a written form for representing speech/signing. My
> consequence: As a linguist I CANNOT use e.g. German written language as a
> scientific tool for describing every day spoken German. I can use elements
> from written German or English to gloss the semantics of e.g. a spoken bantu
> sentence, adding some signs for grammatical elements, following some
> conventional linguistic rules.
> In other words: You have always to differentiate between the area of objects
> which you describe (that could be spoken/signed or written communication and
> the area of scientific description where you use some certain
> representations to show some level of analysis. Spoken/signed (as the
> primary code) or written (as the secondary code) language always belong to
> the object area. For the descriptional area you have to define the use of
> your descriptional elements in a way we need not do for elements used in the
> object area.
>
> Best
>
> Franz
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