Sign Proccessing Software

[Louis-Félix Bergeron]

Hello to all!

I agree to use some different terminology to talk about different things
in different language. For example, a spoken word isn't like a sign. So
we need to talk about "spoken language" and "sign language" (and not
word language...) to talk about languages based on different modalities.
Sign languages need to be recognize for what they are.

But sometimes, different terminology give the illusion that we don't
talk about the same thing. For example, at the University of Quebec in
Montreal, in the research group working on Quebec Sign Language (LSQ)
(note that it is Quebec Sign Language, not French Canadian Sign Language
as I see sometimes), when we work on LSQ phonology, we say "phonemes"
even if this word refers to sound. We use that word because it's a way
of telling the others linguists "we are talking about that language
layer, not the morpheme layer, nor the word layer, etc." If we say
"cheremes", with the explanation that cheremes have comparable fonction
than phonemes, but we name them cheremes because the sign language
articulators are different from spoken language articulators, the others
linguists will ask why give them a different name if they have the same
fonction than phonemes.

I think the debate is there : do we name things following their nature
or their fonction? Sometimes, we need names that underline the nature of
things (for example, SIGN language, SPOKEN language, WRITTEN language)
because the information needed is about nature. But we have other
situations that nature related names are burden because they blur what
we really need to know about named things. And what we need to know can
be the fonctions of things. That is why, at my university, we use
"phonemes" rather then "cheremes" because we don't need to compare the
nature of that kind of unit but the fonctions. So we use a name that
provide information about a fonction instead of nature.

As I said, sign languages need to be recognized for what they are, that
is "SIGN languages" (different from "SPOKEN languages") but also "sign
LANGUAGES" (including fonctions comparable with "spoken LANGUAGES").
That is why there are VERBS, NOUNS, ADJECTIVES, etc. in both kinds of
language because these categories have comparable fonctions in both
languages. I think the same can be applied to written language. We need
names that refer to nature of things, but we also need names that refer
to fonctions. If the fonctions are the same, no matter if what is
written comes from sign language or spoken language, then why have
different names?

Louis-Felix