Hands relationship

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
March 6, 2010

Hello Kate -
Thank you for this message...

Although it is common, that your statements might be true, unfortunately this is not always true at all...

SignWriting has special detailed symbols to show "on top of", "to the side of", "behind" and so forth, called Surface Symbols, but the Surface Symbols are rarely used when writing for everyday use...

Surface Symbols
http://www.signwriting.org/lessons/elessons/less006.html
http://www.signwriting.org/lessons/elessons/less028.html

We used to use Surface Symbols, thinking that signs could not be read without them, and I suspect your avatar really needs them, to know the details of a sign, but we found for signers who already know the signs, reading these signs are not a problem without Surface Symbols, because there is still enough written to "recognize" what the sign should be...

Plus, we are learning to write signs better...making the "Position of Contact" look more like "overlapping" so we can really see the difference between side by side and overlapping in the positioning of the hand symbols, but not all signs are written that clearly yet...

So that is why I suspect for avatar programming, you may need more detail than we are writing with for everyday use...or at least, you need an edited dictionary with these details better written...

In fact, when it comes to writing the Bible and other very large documents in written ASL, the trend is toward "simpler writing" for reading quickly, rather than the detailed writing of the past...

So now back to this issue:

Here is a sign where both hands are parallel to the floor, but they are side by side...neither hand is overlapping the other...the palms are rubbing each other:

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and here are signs where the hands are parallel to the wall, but are to the side of each other. One is not in front of the other:

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On Mar 6, 2010, at 11:30 PM, Kate wrote:

> Hi Val
> 
> I'm trying to figure out when are hands infront or above each other.
> 
> This was my finding, hand symbols parallel to floor overlapping are above each other.
> 
> Hand symbols parallel to wall placed one above the other are in front of each other.
> 
> 
> Regards Kate
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