Re: How to spell a gesture

Gary wrote:

<<
Imagine an alien species that had no hearing or speech
aparatus and who developed a language of physical
gestures, like sign language for the deaf, to
communicate. It seems that their written language
might consist of an "alphabet" of object and motion
elements strung together to "spell out" a particular
gesture.
 >>

It seems to be a theme this year that someone posts about
something just before I've gotten ready to post about it.
Oh well.

As Sai said, over the past month I have been developing
what I'm calling Sign Language IPA (SLIPA).  I based it
on my knowledge of ASL, and other sign languages, but
also largely upon linguistic studies of the phonology of
ASL, in particular by David Perlmutter here at UCSD.  The
site is here:

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

This site is rather large, so it might take awhile to load if
you have a slow connection.  In it, I go over the system I've
developed, and I also review the other systems I was able
to find.  Additionally, I've already begun work on a consignlang,
or CSL.  I'm doing it based on the Kelenala method, meaning
that I've started with a basic set of about 400 signs, which
I then combine to produce a creole-like language.  I haven't
posted enough online about the language yet, but I hope to
have posted quite a bit by the end of March.

I invite comments on SLIPA, since it's by no means perfect.
It has definite strengths and weaknesses, based largely in
part on what I assumed (i.e., the phonological analysis of
signed languages I know of, the goal to make the system
completely ASCII, etc.).  All of this is on the site.

Back to specifics:

Gary wrote:

<<
Here's and example of how hands positions and motions
might be classsified prior to encoding them
symbolically:

I. Symbols representing hand shape
 >>

Snip the rest.  I think you'll find that if you go this root, you'll
end up with signs that are just impossibly long and hard to read.
What you'll end up with, in fact, is an ASCII version of HamNoSys.
Click on the link below and compare the various methods of
transcribing the ASL sign for "Goldilocks".  Stokoe's notation is
impenetrable if you don't have a code; the SignWriting version is
succinct and fairly understandable; HamNoSys's is a math equation:

http://signwriting.org/forums/linguistics/ling001.html

By comparison, ASL "GOLDILOCKS" in SLIPA would be:

sy[Y:]AC!z

Or maybe I could make a "looping" diacritic to describe it better.
Doesn't really matter: It'd be some kind of one-letter diacritic.
You could also specify that the palm faces towards the signer, if
you wanted to be more specific.  Also, note that this is the ASCII
version.  Using Unicode, the Y would have a diaresis over it, and
the z would be superscript, rather than there being an exclamation
point to indicate that the following is superscript.

To say something here that I say on the page, the point of SLIPA
is to give conlangers a basis for transcribing signs.  SLIPA can be
used to do narrow transcription and broad transcription, and I
think that if one were to do a CSL, one should come up with a
separate romanization system (which is what I've done for my
CSL) that makes transcription easier and shorter.

Muke wrote:

<<
They seem to have enlisted Michael Everson to look into getting it
implemented into Unicode.  I don't know the details, tho.
 >>

Bleh.  This is about Sutton SignWriting.  I really don't think much
of it.  It looks nice, but to use it *for real*?  Of course, I would
object
in the same way to a new English spelling system that involved a
new script (or even diacritics).

Muke still:

<<
Actually they do try to duplicate the gesture.  The problem is that the
gestures
in sign language are a lot more complicated than "palm taps palm, then
palm taps chest".
 >>

Very true.  There's a lot of detail, some of which is important, some of
which isn't.  It's kind of like saying that five different languages
have a
word that can be narrowly transcribed as ['e.ge].  I guarantee that this
word will sound different in all five languages.  If a sign language
transcription system is going to work, there has to be some standards
that can be further modified.  So, for example, in a *good* grammar,
a field worker will say, for example, "Language X has the vowels [a],
[i] and [u], *but* [a] is slightly more central in unstressed contexts;
[i]
is closer to English [I], but not quite so far forward; [u] tends to be
the
longest of the vowels, and can often be as low as [o]", etc.  These
kinds
of things (and hearing/seeing a language) helps a learner to know
exactly how to fill in the blanks when they see, "Language X has the
vowels [a], [i] and [u]".  The same goes for signed languages.  However,
the task seems more formidable since people are, in general, more
unfamiliar with sign languages, if at all.

Anyway, this has been a project which has taken much of my time for
the past month or so (to the detriment of my schoolwork).  Hopefully
it can be helpful.

-David

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