The work of e-LIS@

[Daniel Noelpp]

Dear SW List

Paola Latorza and Claudio Baj (a hearing psychologist and a Deaf
Italian Sign Language teacher) submitted their work e-LIS@ to the
workshop. They tried to find the "most natural" ordering of handshapes
occurring in Italian Sign Language: "This research represent a new way
of ordering signs, different from the usual alphabetical one, and is
more congenial to the signing community's linguistic needs, which are
more clearly oriented to the visual-corporeal channel rather than to
the written-oral one." (cit. from their paper for the LREC workshop
2004).

While they limited themselves to the handshapes occurring in LIS they
did find an ordering of 58 handshape very plausible, natural and
pleasing to me. I was impressed how much care they put to the asthetic
feelings of the Deaf people.

Perhaps it is a good idea to try to let e-LIS@ orderings influence the
Sign-Symbol-Sequence?

Daniel