Mundbilder in Swiss-German "Deaf story telling style"

Wed Aug 6 23:10:00 UTC 2003

(...) Valerie wrote ..
There was no sound on the QuickTime video clips that the Swiss group gave
me, plus the person who was signing was using a very "Deaf storytelling
style" and I bet she wasn't thinking of spoken words...So I just wrote what
I saw her lips do, and I did not write every detail of mouth movements
either...so naturally it would not be the same as your Mundbilder
standardization...so this might be a case where standard "storytelling"
facial expressions could be categorized someday...standards like that could
be established without hurting the flexibility of the general SignWriting
system...

Dear Valerie and friends,

from my point of view this is a very important aspect of spelling - style in
SW, which is worthwhile a more detailed discussion.  At least for the
German-speaking area I can predict that GebaerdenSchrift has to include more
"Mundbilder"  if you really want to proof it to be a valuable writing
system. (If you want to be able to understand / (= to be able to translate
the written document to a text in spoken language) Perhaps we should
distinguish between general movement writing that is not bound to any
"spoken language !!!" and a special SL  -
I took some time to study the Swiss video once again and  - hm -  you better
should not bet -  ..

Here are the words which were spoken ...

mov1:    (pfffff)   Gott -  Erde - mach -

mov2:     - Vulkan -

mov3:   -  Wasser - Fluss --- See

mov4:  -  Pflanze ---- Pflanze --- Baum --- Baum - Wald -- Landschaft

mov5:  --- Menschen ---- Menschen --- geboren - Familie - andere  ---

              geboren Familie

mov6:    bauen - Haus - Garten - Idee --- Idee - wunsch --- andre auch

-       andere auch

mov7:   Menschen - verschieden - Kultur - eigen - Wissen -  sein

mov8:  alles da - da  -   wenig -

mov9:  toten - Streit  - Eifersucht - lugen  - stehlen

mov10: mehr - schlimm - schlimm

mov11: Gott - schlimm - schlimm - traurig -

mov12:  Familie - fried  - lieb -

mov 13:  da - schon - Haus -  verschied - Tiere - Kuh - (???) - Ziege -

             Garten

mov14: Mann - Vater - Noah

mov15: Stall - Kuh _

mov16: - was -

mov17: - Gott  - bitte - nicht - Angst - muss - sagen - gro? - Schiff -
bauen - durch - verschieden - Tiere - sammeln - auch - Familie

mov18: - Noah  -

mov19: Familie - sammel - Holz -

mov20: Kuh -

mov21: bauen -

mov22: - Leute - Schiff - Land -

mov23: - Familie - bauen - bauen - bau - Arche

Of course she was thinking of spoken words ...  How comes that ? Mh, I guess
that it is part of the "Deaf storytelling style"   and I think it is very
worthwhile to accept and to understand that. From my point of view we will
find an explanation that the "informed reader/audience" concentrates and
collects data from a mixture of the signing and the performed  "Mundbilder"
If people understand that the information that is expressed with the
performance of the Mundbilder is no just a casual additiv but a meaning
generating aspect of the signing then they will understand that we will have
to write this aspect in our SW-transcription as well.  In order to be able
to do so you have to be familiar with the performed SL.

I sat down and watched the videos very carefully concentrating on the
Mundbilder - you will be surprised to read that the deaf  woman performed
sooooooo many Mundbilder --- in fact there are so many "silent" words during
long scenes -
On the other hand - there are other scenes  - kind of pantomimic, gestual
descriptions of animal movements where no addiditional words are to be
expected ...

Congratulations for the solution with the sw-list

Stefan;-))

  -----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
  Von: SignWriting List [mailto:SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA]Im Auftrag von
Valerie Sutton
  Gesendet: Dienstag, 5. August 2003 23:24
  An: SW-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
  Betreff: Re: AW: ZURICH: WRITING REPETITIVE MOTION...or Question Spelling
FROG/FROSCH

  SignWriting List
  August 5, 2003

  Hello Stefan..Thanks for this message...

    this sign is not the sign for the "Swiss - German" Frog but it is the
    running of a lion ;-))

  I could not find the attached sign for lion...did you attach it?

    - it is almost impossible to identify a single sign without the facial
    expressions for the "Mundbilder" -

    I can imagine that some day we will discuss the writing of the
"Mundbilder"
    as I call the movements of the lips while the person performs movements
as
    if speaking - for other SL of the world as well -

    Since I defined a list of facial expressions to symbolize a special set
of
    articulation movements (Mundbilder) I am able to read even very old
    documents without any difficulty. Single entries in a dictionary can be
    identified btter. One proble might be that from SL to SL the set of
    mouthsymbols may be different ... But everybody of us is writing for a
    special audience - and the readers are usually informed SL users ...

  Yes, of course, I know that your Mundbilder standard symbols, based on
SignWriting facial expressions, are excellent, and I am impressed with its
accuracy for those who know spoken-German!

  Obviously, when I was writing from videotape, as I did the Swiss-German
Sign Language storytelling for NOAH, I was not basing anything on spoken
language...There was no sound on the QuickTime video clips that the Swiss
group gave me, plus the person who was signing was using a very "Deaf
storytelling style" and I bet she wasn't thinking of spoken words...So I
just wrote what I saw her lips do, and I did not write every detail of mouth
movements either...so naturally it would not be the same as your Mundbilder
standardization...so this might be a case where standard "storytelling"
facial expressions could be categorized someday...standards like that could
be established without hurting the flexibility of the general SignWriting
system...

  So a question is: Will all German-speaking countries adopt the same
Mundbilder? That would be an interesting question...the signs are different
from country to country, but maybe the movements of the mouth are the same
in German-speaking countries?...;-)

    Thanks again for your wonderful
    email lessons

  Thank you for expressing your thanks for my lessons - I appreciate it!

  Val ;-)

  Valerie Sutton
  Sutton at SignWriting.org

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