SignWriting List
October 1, 2012

Hello Oscar...
I am glad to read here that you wish to write from the Expressive Viewpoint. The Expressive View is the world standard. It is a request of the Deaf Community. And there cannot be an easy switch from Receptive to Expressive mathematically, because visually some things change when you are in the Receptive versus the Expressive, and such a program would frankly be wasting our time, since everyone needs the Expressive from the beginning anyway… The Receptive view is still used in Sutton DanceWriting and MovementWriting, but it is out of date, in regards to SignWriting… I used to think the switching between the two was easy, until I really tried switching some documents, and it was a very hard experience…we have old old documents from the early 1980's that I hope someday to re-write in the Expressive, but that will be a manual experience because programming it would be too much work.

When I first invented SignWriting in Denmark in 1974, I had been asked to transcribe from videos of Deaf and hearing people signing and making gestures…At that time, I was influenced by the fact that the people in the video were facing me…So I invented SignWriting with the mistaken belief that writing what we see, when people face us and sign to us, was what was needed. So for a decade we wrote from the Receptive View, from 1974 to 1984. But in 1984 our Deaf staff requested a meeting with me and everyone who worked with me. And they demanded that we change the standard to the Expressive View, pointing out that when we write in English or other spoken languages, we are expressing ourselves too. We are not writing the way another person speaks and pronounces words…we are writing it from our own (the writer's) point of view…Because English and other spoken languages are not as visual as sign languages, it is hard to compare this, but actually our Deaf staff was correct…The moment we changed from the Receptive to the Expressive, SignWriting became alive on the page, and more and more people started to learn it and use it…

So this weekend I was trying to think how I would explain to you, that although video transcription could be somewhat easier in the Receptive, it is not what we use and therefore will create problems for you later on…

Now that I know that you plan to use the Expressive View, I will give you feedback on your other signs. For some reason you switched right side with left side in several of them -

Val ;-)

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On Oct 1, 2012, at 6:02 AM, Oscar Koller wrote:

> Hi Charles,
>
> thanks for your answer.
>
> > Oscar, as you have an assistant annotating video tapes, trying to
> > translate in your head to an expressive point of view may be driving > you crazy.
>
> Yes, I have been thinking about that too. And it would be preferable to do annotation from the receptive view point. However, I need the transcriptions in an expressive view point in order to match all the other entries in SignPuddle (as I use them to initialise my system). The manual annotations are intended to serve as evaluation of the initialized system, thus they need to match.
>
> If there was an automatic (mathematical) way of converting receptive into expressive view points, then we could do the "easier" annotation. But I learnt from Steve Slevinski, that this has not been implemented and to me it doesn't seem trivial to implement it.
>
> Or does anybody think differently?
>
> Regards, Oscar.
>
>
> Am 28.09.2012 13:51, schrieb Charles Butler:
>> Oscar, as you have an assistant annotating video tapes, trying to
>> translate in your head to an expressive point of view may be driving you
>> crazy. One project in Belo Horizonte is using receptive SignWriting
>> specifically when annotating video tapes so that you see parallel
>> movements, not mirror movements when you look at them side by side. You
>> write what you see on the videotape, not reverse it to your own hands.
>>
>> What this means is that the videotaped person's left hand is on your
>> right, and the videotaped person's right hand is on your left. You have
>> to remember that you are writing another person's hands, not your own,
>> so when you look in a dictionary like Delegs or any of the current
>> SignPuddles, you will not find what you see on a videotape, but its
>> expressive equivalent.
>> Charles Butler
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 240-764-5748
>> Clear writing moves business forward.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Charles Butler <[log in to unmask]>
>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>> *Sent:* Friday, September 28, 2012 7:29 AM
>> *Subject:* Re: help with signwriting
>>
>> Oscar,
>>
>> Reply, in the first sign, you are using a "both hands" arrow when the
>> hands are moving separately. If you are bringing the hands back toward
>> yourself, you need two arrows toward yourself, put them next to each
>> hand rather than in the middle. This is a common mistake as I'd be able
>> to read it, but the hands are not moving in a common path. This is a
>> common mistake, a single arrow is only used when both hands are actually
>> together.
>>
>> In the second sign, your left hand is pointed downward, but you are
>> using a right hand arrow moving twice. Use a left hand arrow or a right
>> hand, not a mix. You could move your right hand in this fashion, but
>> your hand would be twisted outward rather awkwardly, unlikely that this
>> is what you mean.
>> Charles Butler
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 240-764-5748
>> Clear writing moves business forward.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* Oscar Koller <[log in to unmask]>
>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>> *Sent:* Friday, September 28, 2012 6:06 AM
>> *Subject:* help with signwriting
>>
>> Hello everybody,
>>
>> I added following appended 4 entries to the German Sign Puddle. The
>> editors noted in each case that the writing is not correct. Could
>> anybody explain to me, what should be changed?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Oscar.
>>
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>