Morphemes Cheremes Phonemes Articulators

[Charles Butler]

Television and telephone are two different words which transmit to different senses, why not be clear rather than combinatoric.

Felix said: "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."

My clear word would be to those other linguists "because sound is not light."  Phon is the root for sound, in all the Latin-based languages.  Form AND function are needed, or language breaks down.

I see no way to teach sign language "phonetics" as sign by its nature is not sound.  We can "spell out a sign" which is a very useful comparison in helping people understand SW as a writing system, spelling out the sign by its articulators, similar to a phonetic spelling, but SW, for example, is the International Movement Writing Alphabet, not the International Phonetic Alphabet, the two systems are analogous but you can't write one in terms of the other.   Having a separate term for the "phonetic equivalent in the context of sign language" I would think would help linguists both compare and contrast the process of language.

Articulators of speech (whether signed or spoken) need a morphological term and a meaning term, so perhaps "articulators" would be the proper "mid-term" that would combine both phonemes and cheremes.  Sound is not movement, and I cringe to hear "phon" being used for "movement".  I don't know if dance choreographers would talk about a "melody line" for an overall theme of a ballet and "harmony lines" as dance is not music, but moves in time to it--perhaps they do.  This is certainly an interesting discussion.

Louis-F }_ ix Bergeron <hf091587 at ER.UQAM.CA> wrote:

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.

[Then you tell them that sound is not light.]

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

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