[comp.fonts] Stokoe's American Sign Language Orthography sign language, finger spelling, fonts Re: Sign Language Fonts

poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) (03/03/91)

Stokoe notation is known to be inadequate for the representation of
American Sign Language. Implementing a font for it would be a waste of
time.

Bill Poser

lgorbet@hydra.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY) (03/03/91)

In article <17998@csli.Stanford.EDU> poser@csli.Stanford.EDU (Bill Poser) writes:
>Stokoe notation is known to be inadequate for the representation of
>American Sign Language. Implementing a font for it would be a waste of
>time.

   The orthography I am using now is known to be inadequate for the
representation of American English (e.g. the one I speak).

   NOT A FLAME, but less the quote above be misinterpreted, Stokoe notation
is inadequate *as a transcription system* probably even "phonemically" for
ASL. Whether it would suffice as a real-world orthography is less clear.

   For the purposes of the original post, I suspect, this is all academic
-:), since there is *no* orthography that represents the *form* of ASL
signs that has much acceptance by deaf people. Actually, probabl{y the
most realistic "orthography" would be some funny form of English glosses
of signs, functionally a weird logographic system from the ASL perspective, 
and with not entirely pleasant cultural connotations. Not to mention
that it too would under and overrepresent real signs (because of non
one-to-oneness with English words or even reasonable phrases.

   Larry Gorbet     Anthropology & Linguistics
                    University of New Mexico