Re: Signed Conlangs

Chris:
<<
To my knowledge, there is no such animal in human sign languages
(though ASL is the only one I'm familiar with -- the only written
"version" of that language is English, which is linguistically
unrelated).
 >>

Referencing my page again...

http://dedalvs.free.fr/slipa.html

...there are indeed such systems.  In fact, there are several for
ASL.  For example, when linguists do papers on ASL, there is a
system for transcribing it that I call the Caps Locked system.
Let's say you want to show the sign for "fire", what you do is
show a picture of someone signing "fire" and it's called FIRE.
If a word written in all caps, it's intended to be the sign.  If you're
then familiar with the morphology of ASL, you can then write
out sentences:

ME SEE FIRE

Or sometimes instead of ME they'll use I or 1 (for 1st person).
There's then a convention for inflecting verbs:

PITY(1:3)

That's "I pity him/her", (2:1) would be "You pity me", etc.  And
then the sign for something like "teacher" would be:

TEACH-PERSON or TEACH-AGT.

After it's understood how the sign is analyzed morphologically,
it'd be repeated as TEACHER.

This system is limited, in that you have to either know what the
ASL signs look like, or draw pictures.  It also can't do a thing with
verbs that use classifiers that have literally infinite capabilities in
what they can do and what they can convey.  And as for eyebrows,
various conventions have been created (I've seen carons used ^
and also Q's).

William Stokoe, the one who first studied ASL linguistically,
created a notation system he used for his ASL dictionary based on
the Roman alphabet.  It's not terribly useful for languages other
than ASL, but it has promise (it could be expanded).  There's a
wikipedia
article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokoe_notation

There have also been two orthographies created that aren't
based on the Latin alphabet: HamNoSys and SignWriting.
HamNoSys is the Hamburg Notation System that created a series
of symbols for handshape, motion, etc.  It's written from left
to right, and resembles hieroglyphs.  Each sign can be pretty
long, and to use it on the computer, you have to download a
font, and pay for a program.  As far as I know, this system is
not very popular.  (Perhaps in Hamburg.)

The other system, Valerie Sutton's SignWriting is somewhat
popular.  She created a system to transcribe dance, and was approached
by the Deaf community to expand it to sign language (she has
since expanded it to motion in general).  It's all pictures.  It looks
to be somewhat like Blissymbolics, if you've seen those, and is
described here:

http://www.dancewriting.org/

(Scroll down on the right side for SignWriting.)

The major problem with the system, of course, is that since it's
composed of pictures, it's very non-computer friendly.  A sign
(or a sentence) will end up taking up a good chunk of the paper,
but as a result, it can be written in any direction.  The only problem
is that the system isn't very "creative", in the linguistic sense.
That is, you can use some of the symbols to create new signs,
but you can't transcribe everything.  This is why new versions
of SignWriting (and the font) come out every so often to accommodate
new signs.  It'd be like if Japanese had to create a new kanji for
every single new borrowing (e.g., from English).  There's also
no way that I know of to transcribe verbs with the classifiers.

So there are, indeed, systems, they just have limited functionality.
Clearly the hardest thing to get down is going to be the verbs
using classifiers, where you put one or both hands in the shape
of a classifier, and then you can move one or both hands in any
direction at all as fast or as slow or as wobbly or as straight as
you want for as long as you want.  They're almost completely
unconstrained, and until there's a good way to pin these things
down (and the only way may be to actually trace a path in the
air), a maximally useful orthography for a sign language will not exist.

Chris:
<<
I remember seing somebody's conlang years ago -- I don't recall who
the creator was (they may even be on this list!) -- which was a sign
language for a race of tentacled aliens who lacked a sense of
hearing.  A written version of that language existed, which
corresponded to the shape of these creatures' four mouth tentacles
that they used to make the signs.
 >>

That would be the Rikchik language:

http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/rikchik.html

An awesome idea and design.  This is truly an exolang, and very
well done.  If you go to the index.html page:

http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/index.html

You can see a bunch of other stuff he's done, including "The North
Wind and the Sun":

http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/argue.html

Even comics!

http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/comics/rikscribs.gif

And an explanation for how he webified it all:

http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/technical.html

Oh, this is an intro page:

http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/intro.html

The creator is Denis Moskowitz, and he lives in Massachusetts,
so if there are any conlang get-togethers or conferences over
on the East Coast, we should see about looking him up.

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/