[sw-l] New Website

[Bill Reese]

It's an interesting subject, Val.  :-)

For the sake of not impeding the natural development of a language, I
don't really want to say that one way of spelling something is "wrong,"
and yet my natural inclination is to correct what I perceive as
mispellings.  Makes me appreciate Noah Webster's effort even more.

How do we differentiate between dialectal differences or a natural
change in a language and just plain mispellings?  For that matter,
should mispellings always be allowed as a natural change or a possible
dialectal variant?  Since the goal is improved literacy, such
determinations seem to be paramount when developing a dictionary.  This
brings up the question of how to do that and be fair to the language itself.

For instance, since "lightning" has an unusual spelling in the pairing
of the "t" and "n", we could surmise that it would be a common error to
insert an "e" between them - especially since there is such a word as
"lightening" and that it's a more natural flow in typing english.
Also, since "lightening" can be used to describe the effect of
lightning, there is a need to differentiate between the two.  Then,
looking at the pronounciation of "lightning," we would note that
pronouncing it the same as "lightening" confuses those who hear it (I
actually tested this last night with my son, who became confused and
asked for clarification).  Additionally, "lightning" has a prevalence of
use in published works. Therefore, for the sake of clarification, we
could chose to not accept "lightening" as an alternative spelling for
"lightning."

This leads me to the idea that a sign language's gloss needs to adhere
more strictly to the commonly accepted spelling of the gloss.  If there
are alternative spellings of a gloss that have a prevalence of use in
the gloss's language, then all spellings need to be included in the
gloss - requiring us, therefore, to be able to link alternative glosses
to a sign.

However, this assumes a continued use of glosses as a means of defining
signs and searching for them.  If one of the goals is to wean a sign
language from it's gloss, then we could very well leave the
determination of a gloss's alternative spellings to the user and simply
use the one that's more prevalent in use as a gloss.

So, indeed, if a sign language community uses "lightening" as a gloss
for the sign for "lightning" then it's use should be continued, even if
it would be construed as a mispelling in the gloss's own language.
However, I believe that, for the sake of developing literacy in the
gloss's language, this departure would need to be indicated.

Bill


Valerie Sutton wrote:

> SignWriting List
> October 24, 2004
>
> Dear SW List, Sandy, and Bill!
> Smile...Bill...My knowledge of the English language is not that great.
> And when I lived in Europe years ago, I found out that our American
> dialect of English, is not the center of the world. What the
> Australians or British people say, may not be the same...and no one is
> right or wrong...the dialects simply exist...
>
> So I will leave the English languages to the scholars...the very fact
> that there is a web site out there with two spellings for that word is
> interesting and shows that other people see the spellings as
> interchangeable, no matter what our dictionaries say...
>
> Sandy - Your web site looks very nice and congrats!!
>
> Val ;-)
>
>
>