Moments of Permanence - [redacted title]

From: lady_ganesh Date: June 7th, 2009 02:15 pm (UTC) (Link)

There's a real challenge to this from a linguistic perspective-- ASL is almost a written language in itself, but it's pictograms, not components. I don't know if ASL can be written down to the equivalent of phonemes or not.

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From: sami Date: June 7th, 2009 02:22 pm (UTC) (Link)

It doesn't have to be. After all, English isn't - the English alphabet is an abstraction, where phonemes are often triggered by conditions. It'd probably need a larger alphabet than English has, but there's nothing wrong with that - I'd just rather there existed something less complicated than, say, kanji.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 7th, 2009 02:32 pm (UTC) (Link)

Hmm. But English is made up of phonemes-- there's just a lot of borrowing from other languages, which is why it's not consistent.

One of the reasons Deaf speakers of ASL have trouble learning written English (and this applies over other languages) is that they conceptually have trouble with the phonemes. (This is why if we needed to teach my daughter a signed language it would have been cued speech.) One of the big challenges in terms of getting Deaf people access to proper employment, etc. is bridging that gap. A 'phoneme'-based language would help in that respect in a way an abstract one wouldn't.

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From: sami Date: June 7th, 2009 02:40 pm (UTC) (Link)

English is made up of phonemes, true. But very few of them are reflected in English orthography.

For example, the /n/ sounds are, in fact, different in the words anne and anthem. This is determined by context on a level native speakers aren't even going to be consciously aware of. There are a lot of things like that, without even touching the subject of the vowel space. Or homophones. Or homonyms. You can pare down a lot, the question is what.

(Bear in mind: I am in fact a linguistics major, currently studying Phonetics and Phonology. I speak not from a position of total ignorance.)

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From: lauredhel Date: June 7th, 2009 02:30 pm (UTC) (Link)

"Pictograms"? It is components. Handshape, location, movement, prosody, and various other aspects that can be correlated fairly closely with the phonological features of spoken language. There has been a large amount of research done on the phonology of signed language, which has been going on for decades. There is published work on it, journals, books, etc. There are university courses specifically about sign language phonology.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 7th, 2009 02:33 pm (UTC) (Link)

That's helpful to know-- can you check my comment above and help correct me?

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From: lauredhel Date: June 7th, 2009 02:39 pm (UTC) (Link)

You could start with Google or Wikipedia or a bookstore or something. I suggest ultra basic 101 type reading on both the mechanical linguistics of signed languages, and on the sociolinguistics of signed language and Deaf history, especially the history of what "well-meaning" clueless hearing folk have done to Deaf people and their languages.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 7th, 2009 02:40 pm (UTC) (Link)

Apologies.

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From: lauredhel Date: June 7th, 2009 02:40 pm (UTC) (Link)

Ah, and I see trouble has found her way here while I was writing this. Seriously, I am biting my tongue SO HARD here. Go read something.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 7th, 2009 03:00 pm (UTC) (Link)

Some of the things I said were badly and probably hurtfully phrased (now I've had my shower my brain is working better) and some bits I was just wrong on. I'm going to bow out, because I think any other participation on my part is going to boil down to a lot of mansplaining and nothing of value, but I want to apologize for any hurt I caused.

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From: trouble Date: June 7th, 2009 02:41 pm (UTC) (Link)

Frankly, most of the research has been done in the U.S. Plugging "deaf" into your local library should give you a large number of books to start out with. Heck, the original "Sign Language is a Real Language" is available free on line.

... Which I can't find right now, and my reference material isn't right next to me, but Stokoe Notation on that Very Important Academic Resource of Wikipedia *cough* has some notes.

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