Patrick Chew wrote:

>
> At 02:53 PM 12/11/2003, you wrote:
> >Michael Everson wrote:
> > > Nonsense. This comment is ignorant. SignWriting
> > > is being taught to children in schools, who are
> > > able to write their native languages with it.
> > > This incidentally turns out to make it much
> > > easier to teach the children a second language
> > > and literacy in it. Volume 2 of The Irish Deaf
> > > Community: The structure of Irish Sign Language,
> > > by Dónall P. Ó Baoill and Patrick A. Matthews,
> > > published by Institiuid Teangeolaíochta Éireann,
> > > contains a glossary of ISL with SignWriting
> > > orthography. This work also compares SignWriting
> > > with HamNoSys and Stokoe and favours SignWriting
> > > strongly.
>
> >Peter Daniels wrote:
> >More importantly, has it somehow been moved beyond a mere iconic
> >representation of handshapes, to some sort of linguistic representation
> >of signed languages?
>
> Apologies for being a tad too anecdotal, but...
>
> The past academic year (2002F-2003Sp) one of our "field methods" courses
> was on Hong Kong Sign Language. The concept of a "field methods" course is
> to simulate elicitation in the field of a more than likely unknown language
> system that one is to investigate, but in a controlled setting with
> experienced field practitioners (read: professors). One of the largest
> debated points we had was how to "transcribe" this heretofore unknown
> signed language. We have IPA for spoken languages, to cover the wide and
> diverse range of possibilities, but what had we for signed languages.
>
> The debate came up over using Stokoe, HamNoSys, Movement-Hold, and even
> Sign Writing.
>
> SignWriting, while very transparent and straightforward in sign
> representation, was considered to be less than ideal for detailed
> 'phonetic' transcription for linguistic analysis AND was found to be
> dispreferred in the United States deaf community.
>
> However, we found that trying to transcribe in a more detailed
> 'phonetically desciptive' manner, e.g. Movement-Hold, was unsuitable for
> field transcription due to its rather cumbersom and detailed nature.
>
> *IF* one is to make comparisons between transcription/writing systems for
> signed languages, it would behoove the examiners (read: those of us
> discussing it) to realize that SignWriting parallels 'regular'/'norm'
> writing, while Sotkoe/HamNoSys/Movement-Hold often parallel IPA in scope
> and use. If one were to see spoken language data in indigenous orthography,
> knowing the orthography makes it explicit as to what it is. However, IPA
> often shows something completely different, even though it may be the exact
> same data. I would hold that the same is a salient distinction between the
> various "writing systems" for Signed Languages.

I don't know the other two, but Stokoe was devised not to be a phonetic
(he would say cheretic) transcription system for any signed language,
but to be a phonemic (cheremic) representation of ASL -- he isolated
three dimensions that he thought were significant (location, handshape,
and movement) and identified all the varieties that were distinctive in
ASL. If you want to adapt it for Hong Kong Sign, you'll need to do
exactly the same thing, and add or subtract a few characters in the
final result.

Brenda Farnell uses Labanotation (devised for recording dance, but very
flexible) in discussing e.g. Plains Indian Sign (an auxiliary language).
Her WWS article is a condensation of her *Man* article. I've never yet
seen a copy of her book anywhere.

> Acceptance of SignWriting varies from deaf community to deaf community.
> Michael provides good evidence for the Irish Deaf Community's preference of
> SignWriting, but I would like to voice in that there *are* those who
> disprefer SignWriting, for whatever reason, be it political, cultural, etc.

--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...