| SignWriting List Archive 1 October 1997 - May 1998 |
To: SignWriting.Email.List
From: Tane Akematsu
Reply To: tanea@ibm.ne
Date: October 27,1997
SUBJECT: Literacy In SignWriting
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 00:48:22 -0400
From: Tane Akamatsu or Terry Watada <tanea@ibm.net>
Subject: Re: Literacy in SignWriting
On October 24, 1997, Ronice M. Quadros wrote:
>Hello Valerie Sutton and others from DAC!
>I am from Brazil, but I am living in USA by now. I would
like to put my
>email adress from here, because I have interesting to know
about sign
>writing and, specially, about literacy in signwriting. My
intuition
>tells me that literacy in signwriting will help a lot of
the acquisition
>of writing by deaf people. Please, if you know who is working
with this
>let me know.
>I am native signer, but I am hering person and I am learning
to write
>signwriting. Signwriting has been useful to me because I
am doing
>reserch about Brazilian Sign Language in syntax and I think
that is much
>easier to write the examples from this language in signwriting
than to
>write in any other system. Moreover, I like to write things
that I think
>in sign language through signwriting.
>I am so glad to be with you for signwriting improvement!
>Sincerily, Ronice M. Quadros
>-------------------------------------
>Delamar Weber and Ronice M.de Quadros
>Address: 115 Courtyard Lane
>Storrs - CT 06268-2285 USA
>Phone: (860) 429-1709
>E-mail: dweber@neca.com
>-------------------------------------
This is an interesting question.... Research on bi-literacy
with other
languages would suggest that there are two levels of knowledge
required
to write in a second language. First, one must *know* the other
language (e.g., have a large enough vocabulary, know the grammatical
rules, the semantic constraints, the pragmatic rules, etc.).
Second,
one must know the orthography of the language; the more similar,
the
easier the transfer between the languages is. Thus, between French
and
English, because the actual alphabet is almost 100% identical
and there
are many cognates, the transfer is "closer" than, say
, between English
and Chinese, where there is NO similarity between the writing
systems
and very little in the way of cognate words.
Given that scenario, I would imagine that deaf people who could
sign the
signed version of that national language (e.g., "signed
English" in the
USA, or at least "contact sign") would have an advantage
over those who
signed only ASL, simply because they would have some idea of
a) what
words are needed, and b) in what order. That still leaves the
second
constraint:
SignWriting, which uses a different system of mapping lexicon
to print
than does English (i.e., the "orthography" is different),
would render
it rather opaque to certain languages (I'm thinking English and
Portuguese, since Ronice Quadros asked the question) -- and I
would
imagine to logographic languages such as Chinese and Japanese,
as well.
All of this is armchair psychology, drawing upon research literature
from biliteracy in two spoken languages. I think SignWriting
may be
terrifically useful for biliteracy in two SIGNED languages, since
one
would then be using the same orthography and be working in two
language
from the same modality.
I still maintain that SignWriting, in its current state, is a
great way
to notate signed languages, and can be wonderfully useful for
people
studying signed languages as languages. I'm watching eagerly
for
research results from teachers using SignWriting in their classrooms
to
see if it does indeed translate to better national language literacy
abilities.
Tane Akamatsu
tanea@ibm.net
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