Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/IQ tests/reply (5)

NaNoWriMo? Yeah, i started the Fry last night. I'm an addict to anything with language. then you add fry? and i'm all over that shit! but i fell asleep, so we'll see.

True signed languages (as opposed to signed english, or signed french) are amazing. You map your language differently. I get it intellectually, but i can't really accomplish it to save my life. :-)


 * reduplication - If you sign something, like "to learn", one time, it means one thing, and two times means something more. In learn, once means "I learned something", and two or repeting means "i am in the process of learning this".  I teach sometimes, vs., I'm always teaching.
 * arching - there is a concept of arching that if i make one action / word in one place, it means a specific thing, event, time, etc. So pointing once, means "he", but if i arch, it means "many, always, all of them", so pointing to my right, then drawing across more to my right means "they".  Signing night at my wrist means "tonite" or "night" in general.  Signing it at my elbow and moving downword means "every night" or "at night the sun sets", kind of "always".   (arching is cool, I've read 2 studies on it, but they were at the time, beyond my understanding of asl).
 * direction "verbs". So most (?) any (?) verb can be signed with direction in mind.  If I sign the word "meet" and draw my finger from you to me, when making the sing, it means "you meet me".  But if i sign the same sign starting from me to you, it means "I meet you".  almost any verb that would take an indirect object (ask to, walk to, give to) you can drop the subject and indirect object by the direction you make the sign.

These things sorta blow me away as english speaker and linguist, cause it makes signing a far more dynamic language than English.

I'm really loving the works on Linguistics of Sign and how it helps us understand language at its core.

Course- all that said, when I sign it's like "Me umm ummm ummm WANT umm ummm ummm GO umm umm umm Store", which is about as grammatical in ASL as it sounds in english. ;-)