Sign languages

Kent Karlsson kentk at cs.chalmers.se
Tue Feb 21 12:11:15 CET 2006


> At 21:05 -0500 2006-02-20, John Cowan wrote:
>
> >  > Using this mechanism, for example, Signed Spoken
> >  > English would be "en-signed".
> >
> >I support this.  Signed spoken languages are spoken
> languages in a different
> >modality, just as written (spoken) languages are.
>
> Signed English in the US and Ireland is different
> from signed English in the UK. Do you understand
> how?

Actually I'm a bit confused.

I have no idea at all what "signed spoken language" is supposed to be.
Do you mean "signed written language" (NOT written sign language,
that is something else, like Sutton sign writing), i.e. the word(s)
spelled out using letter signs?

If so, then the tags xx-signed (suggested) and sgn-BB are confusing too.

As far as I understand, sign language (of some variety) uses "word" signs
(not necessarily directly corresponding to words in any particular spoken/
written language) for common "words"/concepts, TOGETHER with spelling
out in signed letters for names and not so common words. Spelling out
everything using signed letters would be painfully slow.

So in practice, correct me if I'm wrong, signed written language (for
some spoken/written language) is a subset of sign language (as used
somewhere). And I'm not at all sure that using two different kinds of
tags for them is all that useful. Or do you mean that the former should
be seen as embedded quotations in some other language in the latter?

		/kent k





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