what is the meaning of this symbol -

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
July 29, 2003

Stefan Woehrmann wrote:
 >there is no typical arrow head but a dot like the back of the  O -hand
- - I
> understand the movement parallel to the wall - but I do not understand
> the
> circle in the end. Can you explain ? -

There are two of those movement symbols...one has the arrow at the end
and one has the dot. The symbol represents finger movement in the
pattern of a question mark. In ASL, some people do the pattern of the
question mark, and then at the end of the movement, they project their
finger forward to show the dot at the end of the question mark. As you
know, a dot can mean a finger projecting forward, in SignWriting, so
that movement symbol with the dot at the end, is representing the
finger projecting forward at the end of the question movement...It is
definitely a special symbol that developed with my Deaf staff back in
the 1980's. If it is not applicable to DGS in Germany, then don't
bother with it...Someday, after we have all the symbols cataloged in
SymbolBank, we will then have to think through what to do, because
there are an awfully lot of symbols...and each Sign Language only uses
some of them...so it will be an interesting project to see if we
couldn't create sub-sets for each Sign Language, to see how small a
symbol-set is needed to write ONE Sign Language, rather than all of
them...Right now you are looking at a huge symbol set, because we are
trying to write so many different signed languages...  Val ;-)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: huh arrow head.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 1921 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20030729/ed25e76d/attachment.gif>
-------------- next part --------------