Finnish Towns

[Sandy Fleming]

Val wrote:

> Sure. And I understand this has to be worked through...the only problem
> I have is I am continually overwhelming people with "too many symbols",
> so I am trying to find a way to solve that problem, making a symbol-set
> that works for "everyday use"...

Remember we had a challenge to list the handshapes for classifiers in our
languages? I've been a bit distracted from this recently so only got so far
with it. However, while working on it I had an idea for reducing the number
of handshapes required. It actually only avoids having to use a few
handshapes, but these are especially subtle or awkward ones that tend not to
be in the straightforward set of symbols.

What happened was that before getting to work on the classifiers I decided
it would be a good idea to make up a SW list of all the handshapes actually
used in BSL. The Black Book (a big fat paper BSL dictionary that we have
here) already lists all the handshapes used in BSL but there were a couple
that weren't in the SSS.

I've attached scans of the handshapes. The first one is used at the
beginning of signs for "walking casually" or "snake flicking out its
tongue" - it's always followed by flicking out the index and middle fingers
to show legs or forked tongue.

The second isn't so clearly drawn but is intended to show a handshape that's
almost like a spread hand with the thumb forward, but the fingers are locked
straight and _very slightly_ angled at the knuckle joint. It's used in BSL
to indicate light sources and sprays of water.

At first I was tempted to use approximate handshapes for those, ie a circle
hand with the tips of the thumb and middle and index finger touching, and
just a regular spread hand with the thumb forward. The problematic shapes
seemed like "more tense" versions of these handshapes.

However, having slept on it, it occured to me that these handshapes are
_only_ used as classifiers (or, strictly speaking, proforms). Now, in SW
classifiers are generally shown with a tension mark (~) to indicate
classifier dynamics. So I decided I _could_ use the approximate, more
relaxed handshapes for those, because the fact that they are actually the
tense, classifier versions of the handshape will be shown in the SW by
having the tension mark against them. So by using the tension mark to
indicate classifier-specific handshapes I can avoid asking for still more
handshapes to be added to SW DOS/Java.

I wonder if this is a principle that can be applied in other sign
languages - ie, that sometimes particularly tense, awkward handshapes are
used only for classifiers and so the more usual relaxed form plus a tension
mark can be used to indicate them?

Sandy
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