Ordering Signs

Sun Nov 29 11:50:31 UTC 2009

Hi Trevor, Charles, Gerard, Christophe, and everyone

    A Deaf teacher and I have been working on a Sign Writing LSQ (a written LSQ) dictionary for one month now.  The Deaf teacher has been testing if Deaf children are able to look up SW orders without alphabetic orders in the dictionary.

    It seems that it works well because Deaf children who have difficulties to read a written French can directly find a written LSQ to help them find a French word in the dictionary.

    Charles mentioned that handshape orders are "index finger", "index & middle finger", "index finger, middle, & thumb", "four fingers", "four fingers & thumb", "thumb & small finger", "thumb & ring finger", "thumb & index finger", and "thumb & fist".  I focus on "Index Finger". You will see the attached ISWA.  The Index Finger has 13 different handshapes from ISWA in the world. However, the Index Finger of the LSQ has only 5 different handshapes.

    In addition, you will see the attached location orders.  Location orders have 5 parts: 1) head & neck, 2) trunk & leg, 3) arm, 4) hand, 5) neutral space.  If you look up a written LSQ in the dictionary, you must think from the high level of location to the low level of location. Contact symbols which include touch, hit, rub and so forth interact with a specific area of the body.  If the hand or the finger touches the nose, you look up quickly a head location order.  For example, if a signer produces BELIEVE (ASL), the index finger touches the middle front: you look up a "head" location order.  Another example, if the signer produces SHOW (ASL), the index finger of the right hand touches the palm of the left hand. You look up a hand location order.  If the signer produces ONE (ASL), the index finger is the front of the shoulder without contact symbols.  You look up a last (neutral space) location order.

    You will see the attached SW orders.  You will find a first page.  You look up index finger and location orders. EYE (LSQ) is a highest level of the head than higher level of the head for TOOTH (LSQ) than a high level of the head for CANDY (LSQ) than a low level of the head for TO SAY (LSQ).

    Trevor, if the signer who uses a British manual alphabet produces "A" (BSL), the index finger of the right hand touches the thumb of the left hand (handshape 5).  You look up an index finger order and a hand location order in the BSL dictionary.  If the signer produces "I" (BSL), the index finger of the right hand touches the tip of the middle finger of the left hand (handshape 5).  You look up an index finger order and a hand location order. You will see the attached SW orders (page 21).

    We will adjust and test the LSQ dictionary.  We are still working on it.   If Trevor, Charles or everyone takes a (SW) workshop or attends a (SW) conference, we will be happy to teach him/her how to look up quickly your own sign language in the dictionary.

    Best regards,

    André
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Christopher Miller 
  To: SignWriting List 
  Cc: Christopher Miller 
  Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2009 1:05 PM
  Subject: Re: [sw-l] Ordering Signs

  Just  a short note about the origin of standard alphabetical order: it actually descends from one of two orders used in the ancient Ugaritic alphabet ca 14th century BCE. (Scroll down to "Alphabetic order" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet.) The order has been kept overall in all the non-Indic descendants of the West Semitic alphabets except for the reformed Arabic alphabet, which nevertheless kept it for letters used as numerals like the way we use a, b, c... in lists. The chart from the primer that you cite is rather ingenious in the way it tries to shoehorn the alphabetically ordered letters into aligning by place of articulation but nearly as many letters fall through the cracks as fit into the arrangement. 

  Using conventional alphabetic orders for the handshapes of different sign languages, following the handshape-letter pairings in various manual alphabets, has the advantage (in each sign language) of using an order familiar from the surrounding written version of the spoken language, but there are always more handshapes than those in the manual alphabet, and the ones in the manual alphabet are not all necessarily used in signs themselves, as opposed to representing written letters for fingerspelling. And, in two-handed alphabets like the British manual alphabet or other older ones used in Italy, Indonesia or North America, a printed letter does not usually correspond to a single given handshape and vice versa. ANd of course, there are many more symbols apart from handshapes in any system for writing or notating signs, whether Signwriting, Stokoe, Hamnosys or any other: locations, movements etc. 

  So whatever the system, the best choice is to base the collation order on aspects of the actual structure of the handshapes and other structural elements used to make signs. Still, once you start on this basis, there are lots of choices, some of them essentially arbitrary, as to what groups of symbols, and what symbols within these groups, should be placed in what order. 

  On 2009-11-26, at 12:10 PM, Charles Butler wrote:

    I understand your concern that SW is too young to mandate an order as it may grow linguistically for some situations.  However, the groups of handshapes are by fingers used, so though they are also ASL numbers, they are based on which fingers are being used in a sign, which makes them very useful in clustering signs together that all use the "index finger", the "index and middle finger", the "index finger, middle, and thumb", the "four fingers", "the four fingers and thumb", "the thumb and small finger", the "thumb and ring finger", the "thumb and index finger" and the "thumb/fist".  

    One can cluster in any number of ways.  Just as aside, the Roman Alphabet is thought to have been based on a primer

    A B C D 
    E F G     H
    I          J
           K     L
       M     N
    O P Q     R
                S
                T
    U V W X Y
                Z

    There are missing sounds, but a grid in order of vowels, bilabials, gutterals, dentals, and liquids seems to work for me.

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