hoerah!! /mouth patterns

[Ingvild Roald]

SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA skriver:



> I have however been
>reading all the messages that come in, and I remember the very interesting
>discussion about mouth-patterns in European sign languages. I had been
>meaning to
>add that mouth-patterns occur frequently in Maltese Sign Language.

I think they are in all the European SLs - I know the Britsh do a lot more
of mouthing than their American counterparts, so the explanation of
English spelling being inconsistent does not seem to hold water

> In fact when
>transcribing the data for my dissertation (using signwriting) I didn't
>know how to
>transcribe mouth-patterns (which were mainly mouth patterns derived from
>the spoken
>language) using signwriting. What I did was write the words in a seperate
>column
>next to the signwriting.  This worked well when analysing the spoken
>component of
>Maltese Sign Language.  However it would be great to find a way of
>transcribing
>these mouth-patterns using signwriting, because in doing so the
>mouth-patterns
>would truly appear to be an integral part of the signing (although how
>could you
>show mouth-patterns of more than 1 syllable??)

Well, I agree that they are integral parts of the signed language, but I
can see a reason to keep the loans from the spoken language apart from the
adverbs and other facial stuff: sometimes the mouthing give way to an
adverb or something, which means that the adverb is more neccesary for the
sign to be understood than the mouthed part. My own uggestion, several
years ago, which I have not tried out, was to use a face circle and the
mouthed word or letters inside. But Stefan's mouth symbols for German
sounds seem so nice, we might try that (so far, most of what is done is
pure dictionary work, and with the word there beside, it is understood
that that is mouthed, so I have only written a few sentences where
mouthing was neccesary).
>
>
>Hope you all have a great summer (just hope it's not as hot where you are
>as it is
>here- mamma mia  :))
>Maria

Well, 16 C and drizzly rain ...  I am preparing a SW dictionary again for
the work in the fall ...

Ingvild
>
>
>
>
>> And last, regarding the mouthing and mouth gestures needed in writing
>> the northern European signed languages, such as German Sign Language,
>> Swiss-German Sign Language, and possibly Norwegian Sign Language...I
>> would like to suggest that Ingvild, Siv and Stefan communicate with
>> each other on possible solutions. Stefan has already developed a lot
>> of mouth movements written in SignWriting, based on the German spoken
>> language. And I know Siv wants to add more....so I hope you will
>> write to each other and try to work out some of the
>> questions....Meanwhile, I am writing a report on writing detailed
>> facial expressions. I hope to have that ready in the next couple of
>> weeks. It will be included in the SignWriting Instruction Database in
>> SignBank in September.
>
>about mouth-patterns