LINGUIS 100 1st Edition Lecture 15 Key factors of Signing 1 Location a Palm location Which way is your palm facing i Away from your body ii Toward the body iii Palm up iv Palm down 2 Shape a There are specific hand shapes that are not as easy to make as others because of the way our body is designed b There are constraints on what you are able to do 3 Motion a What happens in the switching between signs and meanings in signs b Permissible hand changes hand shapes that you can combine c Impermissible hand shapes you cannot go from one shape of the hand to another because of numerous reasons but usually because it is difficult to change the shape of your hand from one position to another because of bodily restrictions i This happens with specific sounds in certain languages as well Comparing Sign Languages Sign languages do not correspond with regions of the world always or spoken languages Irish Sign and New Zealand sign that we saw in the videos were completely different a Irish was influenced by French sign just as ASL was whereas New Zealand sign was influenced by British sign Example Exam question You will be given two pictures of the same person making a sign in sign language and you must be able to tell if the difference between the signs is movement location or motion Contrastive positions of the joints in ASL a There could be a meaning difference just based off of a joint movement b Similar to asking about sounds and the differences between them These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute Contact and Isolation These are two factors that affect how people learned sign and the differences that were produced from this a Differences in vocabulary and movement of signs between people who were segregated in black and white schools b Also in age groups where people were separated into older and younger groups there were differences c Lastly people who learned separated into an all boys group and an all girls group learned how to sign in differing ways as well English and ASL are both considered SVO languages but syntax is different a b c d e How they order adjectives and nouns differs ASL is noun and then adjective English adjective then noun The face can play a role in syntax too like raising eyebrows to signify a question To negate something the eyebrows will be raised and the head will be tipped back and this puts negation on something This is mostly around the Mediterranean Sea Up until now all of the languages we have talked about have been sign languages created for deaf people but what happens when we need to communicate between people with two different languages or even a deaf person to a non deaf person As things changes in a culture so do the parts of a language a Think it is more common for signs to change or die out than written and spoken word because the records are not as plentiful and well documented b History and a country s past plays a part in how current sign is used today c When you get people together even if they do not speak the same language they will come up with a way to talk or their own language Alternative Sign Language this is a type of systematic gesturing that is referred to as sign language but is not an official language in sign this is because this type of language is only relied on or used if two people speak different spoken languages and cannot communicate by means of vocalized communication so they turn to bodily movements usually through gestures and hand signals