SignWriting Terminology

Tue Mar 21 21:58:45 UTC 2006

SignWriting List
March 21, 2006

Hello Charles and Everyone!
Actually Charles, your question is a different one. Your question is  
related to how we sort dictionaries, and that is another topic...

We were discussing terminology...words in the English language that  
describe SignWriting...two different subjects!

Steve and Cherie and I were discussing the difference between the  
term SignWriting and the term International Movement Writing Alphabet  
(the IMWA)...and the equivalents in the spoken language  
world...namely the term Roman Alphabet and the term International  
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)...

But your questions are related specifically to how you sort a  
dictionary and I will answer that in a day or so, I promise! Right  
now, I want to finish discussing terminology...Let's give your  
message below a new subject title...like Sorting Dictionaries?  Val ;-)

--------------------

On Mar 21, 2006, at 12:53 PM, Charles Butler wrote:

> I asked the same question Steve as I am sorting for a multilingual  
> dictionary in ASL, Libras, English, and Portuguese.
>
> I started with my corpus of 750 signs and began to sort them using  
> the Sign Writing for Everyday Use as a guide, and Valerie's article  
> as part of the process.  In so doing, we will need:
>
> 1) A set order of handshapes within the basic 10 groupings.
> 2) A set order of orientations within the basic 6
> 3) A set order of rotations within the basic 8.
> 4) A set order of contacts
> 5) A set order of movements
> 6) A set order of spatial locations
> 7) A set order of body contacts
> 8) A set order of facial expressions
>
> And imbedded in the above, what one does with two hands in a sign,  
> presumably start with the dominant hand, sort through the above,  
> add the second hand, and sort through the abov! e.  I did that with  
> my corpus of 750 and was able to get down to granular between the  
> sign "confusao" and "complicado" where the only differences are  
> intensity and speed.  In my dictionary, I placed smooth before  
> quick, but others might do differently.
>
> complicado   confusao
>
>
>
> Steve Slevinski <slevin at signpuddle.net> wrote:
> Hi Val,
>
> Thanks for starting a message on terminology. I'm not using the
> terminology correctly, so this is very helpful.
>
>
>
> I'm a bit confused by equating the roman alphabet to SignWriting. The
> roman alphabet! is a sequence of ordered symbols. SignWriting is a
> system for writing signed languages. I think the roman alphabet is
> similar to the IMWA. And I think that SignWriting is similar to  
> what is
> taught in English class.
>
>
>
>
> I'm confused by what SignSpelling actually means. Is SignSpelling what
> you use, what you do, or what you get? Is SignSpelling for writing or
> sorting? I thought that SignSpelling was a subset of SignWriting that
> encompasses how to write sign and how to sequentially list the symbols
> in a sign for sorting.
>
> The word spelling has 2 definitions. 1) The act of the person who
> spells a word. 2) The way a word is spelled. It seems to me that
> SignSpelling is the system of rules that a person uses while he is
> spelling(1) a sign which results in a spelling(2) of a sign. Spelling
> is both his action(1) and his result(2), but he uses the rules of
> SignSpelling for guidance while he works.
>
> Many definition! s of "spell" mention the sequential order of the  
> letters,
> but that is because of cultural bias. The word spell comes from older
> words that mean "to talk" or "to relate".
> Middle English /spellen
> /Old French /espeller/
> Old English /spellian/
>
> It is interesting to note that "gospel" is derived from "good talk".
>
> If I was reading a document, I would hope that the words (or signs)  
> were
> spelled correctly. With most spoken languages, a word's spelling is
> used for sorting because words are spelled sequentially. However, the
> symbols in a signs do not appear sequentially, but in 2 dimensional
> space. I consider this 2 dimensional representation of a sign to be  
> the
> sign's spelling. If we had a Sign Spelling Bee, the contestants would
> watch a person perform a sign and would probably use a blackboard to
> write the sign.
>
> But this brings us to the question of how to sort signs in a
> dictionary. We need a way to write the symbols ! of a sign in a
> sequential order. The SignSpelling Guidelines 2004 is a great  
> reference
> for this
> (http://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs2/sw0145- 
> SignSpelling-2004.pdf).
>
> And that's why I was using the terms spelling and sequence when  
> talking
> about a sign. A sign's spelling is what you would find in a sign
> language text. A sign's sequence (or sort order) is a list of a sign's
> symbols that can be used for sorting.
>
> -Steve
>
>
> Valerie Sutton wrote:
> > SignWriting List
> > March 21, 2006
> >
> > Dear SW List Members!
> > Recently someone asked me to explain SignWriting Terminology (the
> > English words I use to describe different aspects of SignWriting).
> >
> > So I will create a chart of the terms I use in English. I hope we  
> can
> > translate these terms into other spoken languages later.
> >
> > Here is a beginning...More will be coming later...continued next
> > message...
> >
> >
> >
> >  
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