question for the way to express 'made'

Sun Jan 10 18:31:50 UTC 2010

Everyone,

sorry for my long silence!

in the world of linguistics, there is an ongoing debate on the tense
systems - one can argue that there is no future tense in the English
language i.e. "I will work"

either way, we know what we are talking about when discussing tenses /
time markers :-)

Trevor: excellent point re: Chinese - I always describe Chinese as a
Lego language ;-) As for Rachel & Bencie saying that there are no
tenses, I guess they were arguing that there are no tenses like the
English language in British Sign Language - to prevent people from
using Signed English, claiming it is part of British Sign Language.
Their book was aimed at the general audience in the UK.

Sandy & Ingvild got it right - with Ingvild's beautiful examples, we
do use a variety of time markers (sound better than tenses IMHO) to
mark the tenses in British Sign Language. Sometimes "last year" is
sufficient when discussing something last year - i haven't read much
on aspects and time markers (bad linguist me-me!)

Trevor: when you first sign "past" when saying something in BSL - it
implies "in the past, we used to have 56k modems" or "we used to go by
boat, now we go by plane" - you cant use it as "simple past tense"
i.e. I ate, I made, etc - okay if you say PAST MY GRANDMOTHER COOK
GOOD PIES WHEN ME VERY-SMALL!

Sandy: yes we do use BEE!/BEEN! a lot - how can i forget that - its
almost the most common sign in BSL!!!

Trevor is very right - it depends on non-manual features in BSL -
sometimes you have to move your shoulders back or your head back/front
to imply - let's not forget our 3 timeline in BSL as well.

GAN LU: You can get in touch with Clark Denmark at your university -
he is a very excellent teacher - he will show you how
time-markers/tense systems works in British Sign Language. Give him my
big greetings if you do meet him

Now that is a very interesting discussion and I am very pleased we
signwriters are making efforts to know our linguistics :-)

Shane

2010/1/10 Trevor Jenkins <bslwannabe at gmail.com>:
> I fundamentally disagree ... with those who say that signed languages
> are not languages. Stokoe (we can forgiving him his bizarre notation)
> was the first to demonstrate that what we use are most definitely
> languages. But the presecriptive grammarians wil try to argue that
> because some signed languages don't have a tense system then those are
> not real languages; neglecting of course that English does not have a
> true future tense. The example of Chinese not having what these
> grammarians demand as a tense is a good counter-example to their
> nonsense; if the language of the majority of people on the planet
> doesn't have a tense system then just maybe those languages that do
> are the odd ball languages.
>
> On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 11:56 PM, Cherie Wren <cwterp at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 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
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> ____________________________________________
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>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
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>>>> > >
>>>> > >
>>>> > >
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>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards, Trevor.
>>
>> <>< Re: deemed!
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Regards, Trevor.
>
> <>< Re: deemed!
>
>
>
>
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