[sw-l] Handwriting and idiosyncratic SW

[Charles Butler]

I am so glad of this discussion.  Counting strokes and time, and space, is a good way to compare writing systems.

Charles

Antonio Carlos da Rocha Costa <rocha at ATLAS.UCPEL.TCHE.BR> wrote:
Hi Sandy,

Good point! Counting symbols seems to be a good way of comparing the
complexity of writing in two different alphabets.

What I was refering to, however, is another point: how many different
ways there are to write the English words you used? And how many
different ways there are to write the signs you used?

I bet there is just one single way to write each English word :-) But
each signs, you may probably write in much more than two ways. To start
with, many signs are as clear when written from the back of the signer,
as when written from the top of the signer. And you always use some
idiosyncratic criteria to eliminate symbols that could well be added.

Look at the sign for DEAF in LIBRAS. Any of them is correct (as far
as I can sign it, and write it). Which one is to be the preferred one?
Which of them to put in a dictionary, to be automatically retrieved? Or,
translated to another language? Or for the purpose of documenting the
sign linguistically?

When we start to study Valerie's manual, we tend to adopt implicitly
here criteria for the simplification of signs. We tend to imitate her.
But when we are faced with new signs, which Valerie has not written yet
(like when you deal with a language other then ASL), or when somebody is
learning SignWriting from another source, different from Valerie's
stuff, then one faces the problem I'm referring to. (By the way, it is
very interesting to observed the Deafs discussing hours on what is the
best way to write a sign they have never signed before: it's a social
negotiation! For every choice, there is always someone disagreeing for
the lack of some aspect of the sign, or for the excess of unecessary
symbols!).

And when one faces the problem of teaching young children, one has
always the problem of which is the right balance between detail,
easiness of writing, and easiness of reading. Again, it's a negotiation,
between teacher and children, and between children themselves.

Take this to the scale where many schools, in different parts of the
country, are starting to write sign language, and we can see the size of
the problem Deaf people have ahead of them, regarding the problem I was
mentioning, of standardization of the writing of signs.

All the best,

Antônio Carlos


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20041006/9dbb1b4e/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: samplesentence.GIF
Type: image/gif
Size: 4330 bytes
Desc: samplesentence.GIF
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20041006/9dbb1b4e/attachment.gif>