terms Phonetic and Phonemic

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
November 30, 2007

Hello Charles, Steve and everyone -

I really appreciate this discussion, and thank you for the really  
good description below, Charles... that is one of the best  
descriptions i have seen of the phonetic and phonemic nature of  
SignWriting and Movement Writing...

Yes, SignWriting is an alphabet. But calling it "only phonemic" or  
"only phonetic" is not accurate, just as you mentioned below  
Charles...it is more complex than that...

The ISWA can be compared to the "International Phonetic Alphabet"  
because it is including symbols in it that are needed for all signed  
languages around the world

But later, we can go into the ISWA and choose just those symbols  
needed to write one signed language, like ASL...and the symbolset  
will become smaller...ASL does not use all the symbols in the iSWA,  
such as the Ethiopian handshapes for example...

For those who wonder what a "chereme" is...that is a term developed  
by Dr. Stokoe I believe, to mean the "phonemes" within signed  
languages....so we could use the term "cheremic" instead of  
"phonemic"...and that is fine too...

But no matter what, SignWriting to me is both phonetic and phonemic  
in nature...as Charles explained well below...

Val ;-)



On Nov 30, 2007, at 10:44 AM, Charles Butler wrote:

> It is an alphabet, in that it has a one-to-one correspondence to  
> discrete pieces of information.  The cheremes it collects are  
> handshapes, with markings to indicate location, movement,  
> repetition, simultaneity, and facial expression.  Though the  
> gestalt of a single "sign" may feel "phonemic", meaning broken down  
> by "meaning", they are in fact "phonetic" being broken down by the  
> use of physical space, without a grammatical overlay at first.   
> Movement writing writes what is there, Sign Writing adds the  
> meaning and the context for a given language, and how it  
> differentiates between the 500 possible handshapes and those it  
> chooses for each language's vocabulary set, but the same could be  
> said of the International Phonetical Alphabet which is reduced to  
> the set of characters used by English, by Circassian, and by Xhosa,  
> to name three contrasting languages with some sounds used only in  
> Circassian, or Xhosa which never appear in English.
>
> Charles Butler
>
>
> Valerie Sutton <dac at signwriting.org> wrote:
> 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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Valerie Sutton
dac at signwriting.org


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