Sign Language Structure
Stokoe, Jr.
and touch, close, and up, ‘because’. One or two apparent quadruple sig clusters are perhaps better
analyzed as compound signs.
2.21. Another most important morphocherermic feature of the language may be an example
of shift. The practice of some signers, particularly those taken as paragons of usage by many, is to
make the tab clearly visible in such a sign as ‘see’. Both by approaching the mid-face (really eyes)
closely, and by pausing perceptibly between this indication of the tab and the outward motion of
the sig these signers achieve a ‘classical’, ‘formal’, or ‘pure’ style of signing much admired but
not always followed by a younger generation of sign users. The informal or colloquial style of
these latter signers, however, sometimes seems to indicate a structural more than a stylistic change.
The writer would analyze the ‘classical’ sign for ‘see’ as mid-face tab, v-dez, and
(particularly the platform articulation of the sign) approach sig, followed by outward movement
sig: in symbols, m V )f . The much more frequently occurring, informal, or perhaps more recent,
sign is composed of zero tab, v-dez, and outward sig: QV f or V f . Apparently signs in very frequent
use, sufficiently distinct in dez and sig from other signs, tend to shift from a body tab to zero tab.
‘Know’, to take another example, is formally, or in older signers’ idiolects, upper face tab, flat
hand dez, and touch sig: uB × ; but a form often seen is flat hand dez, upward sign, in zero tab: B a^ .
2.3. With configuration of one hand as tab and the same or another configuration of the
other hand as dez, the sigs are the interagent motions, or are clusters of sigs beginning with one of
these, with separation, linear motion, or interchange as the terminal chereme.
2.4. At this point the aspects of the sign, tab, dez, and sig need to be more precisely defined.
These aspects are but ways of looking at phenomena, which to its users is unitary. A sign is the
basic unit of the language to the signer, just as the word is the basic unit to the naïve speaker. The
original definitions of tab, dez, and sig permit such classifications of the structure of signs as the
foregoing: but when two hands are in use, there may be difficulty in deciding whether one had is
tab and the other dez or both hands are a double dez in zero tab. This area of doubt can be narrowed
by a decision to call one hand the tab when its motion is negligible or minor compared to that of
the other hand; and to call both a double dez when they move parallel, symmetrically, or
oppositely. The tab-dez analysis seems more likely when the configurations of the hands differ.
The double dez is indicated when both are the same; but as some signers make it, the sign ‘show’
is of the latter kind: the flat hand, B, and the index hand, G, meet directly in front of the breastbone
and move forward together, the fingertip pressed into the other palm: BG × f . However, others hold
up the B, palm outward, touch its palm with the other hand’s G and press it forward. With respect
to the touching sig the B is tab and G dez, but with respect to the outward sig the hands together
become dez, pushing forward. This might be written cheremically: BG ×( f ) , with the parentheses to
show that the hands in contact now act as dez performing the second sig.
The double dez, identically configured, in tab zero often requires another symbol, which
though written in (second or third) sig place is a morphocheremc, not a cheremic symbol. This is
the symbol, ‘~’, for alternating movement of the hands of the double dez.
The F-hands held about six inches apart and moved downward, FF v , make the sign which
renders English ‘decide’ or ‘decision’. The same double dez moved alternately up and down, FF r~ ,
makes the sign for ‘if’ or ‘judge’; and again moved alternately to and fro, FF =~ , this double dez
makes the sign translated ‘explain’.
The double dez hands may operate first as if they were tab and dez with an interagent sig,
then move. Such a sign is ‘habit’, the tab zero, dez (double) the fist, first sign cross, and second
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 2018
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