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.

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.

sincerely,
-Patrick Chew
UC Berkeley
Dept. of Linguistics: doctoral student