Notes:
█████,
The idea is clever but unlikely to propagate. The extra-movement causes the sign
to look and feel flamboyant rather than instantly connoting "grand" as in the
progeny of my progeny. Since the movement can easily be mistaken for flamboyance
the use would likely cause confusion. I could envision that if perhaps the loop
morpheme had originated long ago with a larger movement or more specific sign
and evolved naturally through compression or truncation into the small / fast
little loop movement -- it could have become a thing.
One of the issues with your line of thinking is perhaps that you might think
that the spelling of grand is somehow hard or takes more time than doing a
loop-de-loop in your sign.
Many of us just spell grand as we move our hand toward our head and it takes
little (or no) more time than doing a sign.
Many Deaf spell at a speed of 1/5th of a second per letter. Hearing people (2nd
language learners / rookies) find spelling laborious and thus seek "signs."
Example, I can spell car much faster than I can bring both hands up to an
imaginary steering wheel.
"Listener" is indeed awkward eh? I tend to go with "viewer." Sometimes I go with
observer, audience, or conversation partner.
Again, your idea is clever but you asked my opinion and my opinion is that it
won't fly.
Societal acceptance of protologisms is a tricky, twisty thing though so who
knows?
I'm into teaching citation versions and a few strong variants of signs. I leave
the coining process to the more avant-garde influencers out there.
Warm regards,
Bill
On Thursday, October 26, 2023 at 12:31:18 PM PDT, ██████
wrote:
Hi Bill,
First off thanks for making your Lifeprint course available, this is
such a great resource!
I'm up to the end of unit 2 and I see at the end of the review video you
offer "bonus vocab" signs for the words "grandson" and "granddaughter".
In the video you show the signs as FS-"grand" followed by the
son/daughter sign.
But it occurs to me instead of fingerspelling the first half of the
word, there's more than enough room in the "son" or "daughter" sign
motion to add the little loop-de-loop inflection that signifies
"grandfather" or "grandmother" compared to just "father" or "mother".
Ie, while making the sign for "son" or "daughter" one could do a loop
with the primary B-hand while bringing it down toward the secondary.
Couldn't that be a more efficient (while equally clear) sign for the
son/daughter version of grand-relatives? Or is there already another
established sign that would be too easily mistaken for it?
If it seems like a feasible sign, would it be too brash or offensive for
a hearie to just start using that in the wild and see if it catches on?
Or is that basically how the language evolves naturally anyway?
I guess more importantly, to a fluent listener/observer would it be like
an ASL version of slang? Or would it be more like an ASL version of
gibberish?
Thanks in advance and kind regards,
███████████
PS — I struggled a bit with the term "listener" in this context. Is
there a proper/accepted term for someone who's being signed to?
"Observer" was closest that came to mind, but it feels a bit too
3rd-persony to describe to a person who's directly participating in a
signing conversation but not currently the one doing the signing.
Notes:
index-old.htm
matrix-for-sign-pages (_matrix.htm)
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