Sign Language Structure
Stokoe, Jr.
neck may be touched, pinched, brushed, struck, or approached by the dez in the making of signs.
However, examination of many pairs of signs for minimal contrast indicates that some of these
markers are but allochers in complimentary distribution. For example, the forefinger of the dez
hand can easily brush the tip of the nose in passing across the front of the face, but when the sig is
motion outward from the same region, particularly when the dez is such that the sign is interpreted
as ‘see’, the signer and viewer tend to think of the marker as the eyes. Since no significance
attaches to a contrast solely between nose and eyes as tab, these are analyzed as allochers of the
tab mid-face. Their selection is determined by dez and sig.
Similar consideration of all the signs observed leads to the isolation of six tabs above the
shoulders. The six with the writer’s symbols: the whole face or head h, the upper face or brow u,
mid-face m, lower face l, cheek or side face c, and neck k.
The signer’s trunk also figures as a tab, but large as this part of the body is relative to the
face, it is not divided into smaller regions contrastively, that is cheremically. One or both hands as
dez may touch the top of one shoulder with the fingerstips (to make the sign ‘responsible’ or
‘responsibility’). Yet both hands may be placed on the hips (suggesting the kazatsky dancer’s
attitude and signifying ‘Russia’). These two signs use the extreme upper and lower allocheric limits
of the tab trunk, but the contrast is all in the dez and sig, and not even the whole distance separating
the shoulders from the hips is significant. The trunk tab symbol is [.
The non-dez arm makes the tab for some signs. The upper arm is tab for ‘hospital’,
‘Scotland’, and the slang expression ‘coke’. It’s symbol is \ . The writer has observed signers
occasionally making one or other of these signs as low as the muscle of the forearm, but always in
casual, informal circumstances where a colloquial or relaxed manner of speech would be equally
congruent.
The arm from the elbow outward is used in a different group of sign--that is, with dez or
sign different from those of the signs made on the upper arm. And it is used in three contrasting
ways, upraised, prone, or supine. The symbol for the upraised forearm, the elbow making an acute
angle, is j. The symbols for the last two of these tabs are the same as those used for the movement
of dez in pronation, p, or supination, s. Again the aspect is all important. As tab, the symbol s
denotes the forearm presented supine; as sig the same symbol denotes that the dez is rotated in
supination.
In all these arm tabs the hand is ignored by the language; it may be open or closed, tense
or relaxed depending on the signer’s habit of signing, his state of mind, or muscle tone. But there
are other signs with tabs signaled by the hand opposite to the dez hand in which configuration is
the only important consideration. As configurations, these tabs differ not at all from dez
configurations. The different is in their use: when the hand having the configuration moves or
changes, it is acting as dez; when it acts as point of origin or termination of motion or otherwise
marks position, it is acting as tab. Any of the configurations used as a tab may also be used as a
dez, but not all dez configurations are used as tabs.
1.40. When the visual aspect of ‘position’, that is the tab chereme, is marked neither by a
precise anatomical point nor by difference in attitude, the sole determinant of position is the hand’s
configuration. As stated in 1.1 nineteen configurations are used to represent letters in the American
manual alphabet. All of these and more might be used as structure points in sign language, but
actually only sixteen configurations are used contrastively. However, the number of distinct
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No. 2 – Fall/Winter 2018
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