Nominal vs Cardinal numbers in ASL

Sun Feb 8 23:09:57 UTC 2009

SignWriting List
February 8, 2009

Hi Natasha!
That is certainly a good point, and of course using Arabic numerals  
are fine...Years ago, in our storybooks, I started placing the page  
numbers in both the Arabic numeral on one side of the page, and the  
number written in American Sign Language was on the other side of the  
same page, to give people a way to use either...

I was trying to encourage people to learn to read the numbers...and  
when you have to look something up on "page 12", and you read that  
page number in ASL quickly, it is one more tool for teaching  
reading...the symbols start becoming "more familiar"...if you can find  
the page, you know you read the SignWriting...

But certainly nothing is a requirement...I am just trying to update  
old books...that is all...and the issue how to write page numbers had  
come up over the years...

We seem to have "two opinions" on the actual writing of the ASL page  
numbers...whether they be cardinal or nominal...but meanwhile, if you  
don't want to write page numbers in ASL...that certainly solves that  
one fast....;-)

By the way...we have some documents written in the Arabic spoken  
language, on our site, because of research done on SignWriting in  
Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and at one point we hired an Arabic  
translator to translate around 30 pages of Dr. AbuShaira's  
dissertation into English...there was something that really surprised  
me in the original Arabic document...I could not find any Arabic  
numerals the way we, in the west, know them...They are there on the  
pages, but the Arabic numbers in actual Arabic documents look somewhat  
different than what we use in the west...here in the west, we changed  
the look of the numbers slightly...

How do Chinese documents number their pages? In Chinese? Or do they  
use Arabic numbers now in their own style?

Meanwhile, I am going to continue to number our literature in both  
Arabic and ASL numbers...I think it is useful to have both...

Val ;-)

-----------

On Feb 8, 2009, at 2:47 PM, Natasha Escalada-Westland wrote:

> Maybe this has been brought up before regarding page numbers, but I  
> am curious, why can't the Arabic numerals be used?  Written English  
> (and many other written languages) numbers pages using 1, 2, 3 and  
> so forth rather than one, two, three or uno, dos, tres.  I'm  
> wondering what the consensus is with regard to SignWriting?
>
> Natasha Escalada-Westland, M.Ed. (D/HH), Macromedia Cert.
> www.westlandasl.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > From: sutton at signwriting.org
> > To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> > Subject: Re: [sw-l] Nominal vs Cardinal numbers in ASL
> > Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 12:43:28 -0800
> >
> > SignWriting List
> > February 8, 2009
> >
> > Thank you, Adam, for this really good explanation of the  
> problem...and
> > for your vote for nominal. That has always been my feeling too...
> >
> > However, around four months ago I had a long discussion with another
> > native ASL signer about this and that person voted for the
> > cardinal...so if you count my vote, then we have one cardinal and  
> two
> > nominal, but i am not native or Deaf...so we need more opinions, or
> > maybe test readers and ask them to search for pages in the book only
> > using ASL numbers to see which works best for them finding the pages
> > fast...
> >
> > Any others have opinions on nominal or cardinal page numbers in ASL?
> >
> > Val ;-)
> >
> > -----------
> >
> >
> >
> > On Feb 8, 2009, at 12:01 PM, Adam Frost wrote:
> >
> > > A very fine line here because page numbers are counted pages which
> > > number the page with a label. They are often used as both
> > > interchangeably mostly because English doesn't distinguish between
> > > both and most people don't know the difference. When thinking  
> about
> > > how I usually refer to pages, I usually use the cardinal form as I
> > > am basically saying "turn 5 pages from the beginning" verses "turn
> > > to page 5" which would use the nominal form. However, I think that
> > > we are actually labeling the page as "Page 5" so I think that in
> > > this case it should be nominals that are used. I hope that makes
> > > sense. Anyway, that is my 2 cents worth. (Hmm... would that 2 be
> > > cardinal or nominal? Ha!) ;-)
> > >
> > > Adam
> > >
> > > On Feb 8, 2009, at 11:40 AM, SignWriting wrote:
> > >
> > >> SignWriting List
> > >> February 8, 2009
> > >>
> > >> Hi SW Listers!
> > >> I need your advice. Most ASL numbers are the same whether they  
> are
> > >> nominal or cardinal, but there are five that are different....the
> > >> first five numbers are cardinal inside a sentence, but nominal  
> when
> > >> telling people your phone number, your apartment number etc...I
> > >> believe that is correct anyway ;-))
> > >>
> > >> In other words, the cardinal is part of meaning in a sentence,  
> but
> > >> the nominal is like a "label"...like stating your Social Security
> > >> Number (a long number that represents a person in the US)...if it
> > >> has a lot of "ones"...like 111-897-1102...or something like
> > >> that...I don't believe the palm turns towards the chest when
> > >> stating your Social Security Number, does it?
> > >>
> > >> So when reading tiny tiny page numbers at the bottom of pages  
> in a
> > >> 500 page SignWriting book, should the page numbers be nominal or
> > >> cardinal? I have always felt that the page numbers were like
> > >> "labels" for finding a page quickly...but others have disagreed
> > >> with me...meanwhile most people do not have a lot of experience
> > >> reading large books in SignWriting yet, including myself, so we  
> all
> > >> are guessing a bit... It may really be a matter of all of us
> > >> getting used to this, and figuring out, by testing readers, who  
> can
> > >> find page 1 faster...when it is nominal or cardinal? smile...
> > >>
> > >> I am updating our old Goldilocks documents with the symbols of  
> the
> > >> ISWA and while I am doing that update anyway, I wondered about  
> the
> > >> page numbers...They were nominal in the old documents.
> > >>
> > >> Should page numbers be nominal or cardinal? Please see  
> attached...
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> <Nominal-Cardinal.png>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
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