Terminology "swim lanes"

[Sandy Fleming]

> Bill Reese wrote:
> > The poetic nature of columnar sign writing does not change with such a
> > concept.  That would still hold true.  It's simply that the concept of
> > a couple "lanes" seems to restrict the descriptive spaces available in
> > a sign.
>
>
> Thanks for this comment, Bill...Writing in columns is meant to be good
> for the language, not to restrict it...So if more lanes are needed, we
> could add them...all ten positions marking ten people can be written
> but actually that may have little to do with body shifting...Those ten
> positions will not necessarily create more lanes from side to side,
> because some of them might be in front, not just to the side...The

I am sceptical of the idea that someone could sign something about 10
separate people and keep on locating each one by position alone. It seems to
me quite a remarkable memory feat and even more taxing on the listener's
memory!

I think that to get to the bottom of the issue, you really must be careful
to distiguish between topological space and syntactic space at all times.

In topological space the possibilities for populating the narrative are
vast - you can sit in a room with ten people and refer to any one of them
any time (in sign language) by simply pointing at them. This puts no strain
at all on the listeners' comprehension or memory. Similarly, in an
auditorium situation the signer at the lectern might refer to "the
interpreter", "the people at the back", "the man who just went out" and so
on, by pointing.

In writing, the writer has to give more context because they may be writing
about a speaker who points at an interpreter but simply writing a pointing
sign away off to wherever the interpreter was standing won't normally be
enough. The writer will probably have to mention the interpreter as, say
INTERPRETER POINT or as it might be put in English, "said the speaker,
pointing to the interpreter".

So I think topological space has nothing to do with writing in furrows (just
to keep the neologisms coming - don't you think writing is like planting
seeds? :) and the written form of a thing would have more asides describing
the context (just as in written English narrative), rather than depending on
the reader being able to make out exactly what part of topological space the
writer's pointing-symbol and eye gaze were referring to.

Topological space can also exist in the signer's mind as he builds up a
scene in the signing space, but I think the principles are about the same,
except that the signer has to build up the scene explicitly.

Although of course there are shifts of body and head position in any aspect
of sign language, I think it's only when we come to syntactic space that the
"furrows" really apply. This is the signing space where people and objects
are placed at a convenient (or rather "syntactic") point in the signing
space so that they can be pointed at again later - the position in the
signing space has nothing to do with the person's real position.

I think that for syntactic space, the 3-furrow model fits very well (I'm
thinking of BSL, you understand, but hoping there are some universals here).
When a signer uses left and right furrows, he can talk about four people -
himself (or someone in his narrative that he takes on the role of) the
person to the right, the person to the left, and the person to the centre
(actually, maybe make that five - he can also add the person he's speaking
to, by eye gaze when he's pointing YOU, but only if she's in the story).

But if he needs to add more people to this, I don't think it's usual to add
more furrows - rather, I think there are various grammatical devices brought
into play. Some I can think of are:

   -   he might put two or three or more people in a single furrow and refer
to them collectively instead of individually;

   -   he might have two people in one furrow but they're easily
distinguished in some other way such as height (for example a mother talking
about her husband and two children might have her husband on the left, her
children on the right, and easily distinguish the children by her
eyegaze/body inclination because they're different heights;

   -   when other possibilities are exhausted, he might start referring to
some people by reapeating their name as well as pointing and eye gaze,
because after all, it does start to become a strain on the memory,
especially the listeners' memory, when there are six or seven people in an
extended narrative, all being distinguished only by syntactic location.

So I think it's only occasionally that a writer will want to use a fourth or
fifth furrow. Perhaps, just as many things that are heard in speech are seen
as bad in written style, limiting yourself simply and clearly to three
furrows will be seen as "good writing style" and any more than that might
come to be considered rather casual, avant garde or even inconsiderate  :)

Sandy Fleming