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