terms Phonetic and Phonemic

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
November 30, 2007

HI Everyone!

Regarding the general term "phonetic" and "phonemic"...

I would like to ask all of you on the SignWriting List....

Do you think of SignWriting as "phonetic" or "phonemic" ?

I personally like to think of SignWriting as an alphabet that can be  
written either phonetically or phonemically, depending on the writer  
and the choices they make while writing...

Technically we can write every nuance of a movement if we wish, and  
that would be more "phonetic"... more like "Movement Writing"

or as time goes by...

certain SignSpellings start to become standardized and slowly  
"phonemic" SignWriting happens too...

No matter what, SignWriting is "alphabetic", but sometimes linguists  
and scholars want to define the kind of alphabet it is...

Some say it is a "featural alphabet" and that it may be...but it is  
still an alphabet nonetheless...

And I feel it can be either phonetic or phonemic depending on the  
writer?

Am I wrong to think this?

Val ;-)



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