question for the way to express 'made'

Sun Jan 10 01:18:54 UTC 2010

Cherie Wren,

I guess I would write, as opposed to Sutton-Spence and Woll in Linguistics that ASL does have tense as a meta-language, but the grammar of the language does not put the tense markers on the particular verb cheremes, but on the utterances as a whole.  Just like math -(3x + 5x +9y) = -9y - 8x.  The negative on the one side applies to the entire parentheses and everything in it.  So "Yesterday (I make snowmen, slide down hills, climb up again)" becomes, "Yesterday, I made snowmen, slid down hills, and climbed up again" in English The tense exists as a distributive over the entire phrase.  The language does have tenses, and can fix actions at given points in time, by modifiers such as continually, constantly, repetitively, or clumsily--all of which may modify the action in some way to express both time and manner.  

Does that help?

Charles Butler

________________________________
From: Cherie Wren <cwterp at yahoo.com>
To: SignWriting List <sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu>
Sent: Sat, January 9, 2010 6:56:46 PM
Subject: Re: [sw-l] question for the way to express 'made'

Sorry I am an interpreter, not a linguist.  I have to constantly defend against people who say ASL isn't a real language because it doesn't have______;  when ASL just handles that particular ___ differently than English.  Or "ASL doesn't have a word for ___"    etc.  In Linguist-Speak, maybe ASL and BSL don't "have tense" but what I mean is ASL does differentiate between past, present and future, it just does not mark each individual verb in the entire discourse like English does.  I don't know the formal linguist definition for tense, or requirements for 'having' tense, but ASL does manage to convey past, present, future, '-ing', '-ed' etc.

cherie

________________________________
From: Trevor Jenkins <bslwannabe at gmail.com>
To: SignWriting List <sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu>
Sent: Sat, January 9, 2010 3:10:18 PM
Subject: Re: [sw-l] question for the way to express 'made'

Um, according to Sutton-Spence and Woll in their "Linguistics of BSL"
the language does *not* have tense. In the same way that Chinese does
not have tense. There are time-markers to denote a change of time but
that is not the same as grammatical tense where the verb-lexeme is
altered for moment of occurence. Now as someone performing
sign-to-voice i would use the time-markers amongst the signs and then
change the spoken verbs according; or with voice-to-sign I would hear
the spoken verbs and insert a time marker. Notice that each spoken
verb has to be changed but only one signed time-marker is required.

On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Cherie Wren <cwterp at yahoo.com> wrote:
> So, based on what you say, BSL expresses tense the same way as ASL.  It DOES
> have tense, it just doesn't add it to every verb, like English does.
>
> Cherie
>
> ________________________________
> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
> To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> Sent: Fri, January 8, 2010 7:18:18 AM
> Subject: Re: [sw-l] question for the way to express 'made'
>
> Cherie,
>
> As I mentioned, BSL doesn't have tense. In telling a story, you simply
> state a time (eg LAST-WEEK or IN-THE-PAST or TOMORROW), then that time
> applies to everything you sign until you state new time.
>
> BSL does have a lot of aspect, though, ie how an action is carried out.
> For example, completed, protracted, interrupted and so on.
>
> Sandy
>
> On Fri, 2010-01-08 at 03:43 -0800, Cherie Wren wrote:
>> In ASL the tense is one of the first things stated in a story.  Then
>> tense is not restated until it changes.  So if Lourdes set up that the
>> story happened in the past at the beginning of the story; "Once upon a
>> time" or the equivalent, then EVERY verb from then until it changed IF
>> it changed would look like present tense on the surface, but that is
>> only because the tense has already been established.  English has to
>> state the tense with every flippin' verb.  ASL does not.  (Sorry,
>> can't comment about BSL ::smile::)
>>
>>
>>
>> ______________________________________________________________________
>> From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
>> To: SignWriting List <sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu>
>> Sent: Fri, January 8, 2010 3:59:56 AM
>> Subject: Re: [sw-l] question for the way to express 'made'
>>
>> I'd agree with Trevor's grammar here:
>>
>> PAST FOOD COOK (hold with aspect) FINISHED.
>>
>> "PAST" is the time marker (there's no actual tense in BSL) and
>> generally
>> comes in the narrative before the things that happen at that time
>>
>> "FINISHED" (or "BEEN") is the perfective aspect, and follows the verb
>> (though not all aspect is handled this way).
>>
>> But Shane's:
>>
>> FOOD COOK PAST
>>
>> isn't wrong, it just needs support from non-manual features, as he
>> points out. To me it gives a different emphasis, more on WHEN the food
>> was cooked, rather than the actual cooking.
>>
>> Does anyone perceive any semantic difference between:
>>
>> FOOD COOK FINISHED
>>
>> and:
>>
>> FOOD COOK BEEN
>>
>> in BSL? You'd think that "FINISHED" would have more of an achievement
>> associated with it but it seems to me that this connotation is lost in
>> using it as a perfective.
>>
>> I would love to write some grammar rules for SignWriting BSL: that
>> sort
>> of thing would help people to write with more confidence, I think, but
>> I
>> don't really feel qualified.
>>
>> Sandy
>>
>> On Thu, 2010-01-07 at 22:20 +0000, Trevor Jenkins wrote:
>> > Hi Shane,
>> >
>> > Interesting. I'd put that BSL time marker earlier. Something like
>> >
>> > PAST FOOD COOK (hold with aspect) FINISHED.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Shane Gilchrist
>> > <shane.gilchrist.oheorpa at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > Dear Gan,
>> > >
>> > > we dont really have past tenses in the same sense as the English
>> > > language - for instance, in BSL (using glosses - sorry!)
>> > >
>> > > I made food:
>> > >
>> > > - FOOD COOK^nodding
>> > > - FOOD COOK PAST
>> > > - FOOD COOK FINISHED!
>> > >
>> > > non-manual features are very important here.
>> > >
>> > > Shane
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > 2010/1/6 Gan  Lu <glu at uclan.ac.uk>:
>> > >> Hi Charles;
>> > >>
>> > >>  Thanks for the comment. So do you reckon the past tense is
>> necessary here? And if we use "create". should it be 'Created' then?
>> > >>
>> > >>  Thanks
>> > >>  Gan
>> > >>
>> > >>>>> "Charles Butler" <chazzer3332000 at yahoo.com> 06/01/10 1:54 PM
>> >>>
>> > >> Hmm.  In context the sign, I would think would be either "make"
>> or "create".  The tense is carried by the situation.
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> create
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> ________________________________
>> > >> From: Gan Lu <glu at uclan.ac.uk>
>> > >> To: sw-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>> > >> Sent: Wed, January 6, 2010 8:05:15 AM
>> > >> Subject: [sw-l] question for the way to express 'made'
>> > >>
>> > >> Dear Adam and Valerie;
>> > >>
>> > >>  I'm implementing the system now. While I have a question:
>> > >>
>> > >>    why can't we use an ASL gesture to express the meaning of
>> 'made' on the first page of the 'Frosty the Snow Man', other than
>> using the FingerSpellings to sign these four letters respectively?
>> > >>
>> > >>    I suppose the reason is because the word 'made' is a past
>> tense, and there is no ASL for it.
>> > >>
>> > >>  The reason I'm asking is my intention is to implement the first
>> page as a 4-by-4 output pattern, which are 16 sign-boxes in total
>> includes those punctuations. So I'm looking for a way to squeeze the
>> word 'made' into a box.
>> > >>
>> > >>  Thanks
>> > >> Gan
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> ____________________________________________
>> > >>
>> > >> SW-L SignWriting List
>> > >>
>> > >> Post Message
>> > >> SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>> > >>
>> > >> List Archives and Help
>> > >> http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/
>> > >>
>> > >> Change Email Settings
>> > >> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> ____________________________________________
>> > >>
>> > >> SW-L SignWriting List
>> > >>
>> > >> Post Message
>> > >> SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>> > >>
>> > >> List Archives and Help
>> > >> http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/
>> > >>
>> > >> Change Email Settings
>> > >> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > ____________________________________________
>> > >
>> > > SW-L SignWriting List
>> > >
>> > > Post Message
>> > > SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>> > >
>> > > List Archives and Help
>> > > http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/
>> > >
>> > > Change Email Settings
>> > > http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ____________________________________________
>>
>> SW-L SignWriting List
>>
>> Post Message
>> SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>>
>> List Archives and Help
>> http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/
>>
>> Change Email Settings
>> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________
>
> SW-L SignWriting List
>
> Post Message
> SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>
> List Archives and Help
> http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/
>
> Change Email Settings
> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________
>
> SW-L SignWriting List
>
> Post Message
> SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>
> List Archives and Help
> http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/
>
> Change Email Settings
> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l
>

-- 
Regards, Trevor.

<>< Re: deemed!

____________________________________________

SW-L SignWriting List

Post Message
SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu

List Archives and Help
http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/

Change Email Settings
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/sw-l/attachments/20100109/c1cd9012/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------

____________________________________________

SW-L SignWriting List

Post Message
SW-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu

List Archives and Help
http://www.signwriting.org/forums/swlist/

Change Email Settings
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sw-l