That diagram is interesting.  hmm.  A complete list of morphological characteristics might be hard – I don’t think it is as settled as parts of speech.

In my mind, morphology really translates to: some named characteristic of a group of signs or a group of morphemes.  Practically speaking, in most sign languages, a sign is almost the same thing as a morpheme – that is in most sign languages most simple signs are one morpheme.  (This is quite different from spoken languages where many word are made up of two or more morphemes as in disinterested which has at least 3 morphemes: dis + interest + ed.)   However, this isn’t always true.  For example, ASL has a negative incorporation element of the hand twisting/rotating (as in DON’T-KNOW, DON’T-WANT) that is at the morpheme level.   Compounds are usually two morphemes. Furthermore, under some theories, classifiers can be considered to be bundles of many morphemes – the handshape is one or more morpheme, the location another set, the action another set, orientation…etc etc. 

So there are really at least four elements of this information:  1) How many morphemes are there in a sign (usually 1, sometimes 2, sometimes  many, other choices less common). 2) are the morphemes simultaneous or sequential and 3) for each morpheme, what is its morpheme group, if any? and 4) is the sign as a whole in some morphological group? 

Examples:

DON’T-WANT: 2 simultaneous morphemes:  WANT + Negative incorporation

WOMAN: 2 sequential morphemes: GIRL + FINE.  The sign is a compound

J-B (job): 2 sequential morphemes: J + B.  Each element is fingerspelling; the entire sign is a fingerspelled loan sign.

MOTHER: 1 morpheme

BAKE-ER: 2 sequential morphemes BAKE + ER (person affix).  Some people might classify this as a compound, some might call it an affixed form

Given this complexity, it might make sense to set up

1) a simple set of choices that allow multiple choices, so that I could select for example classifier AND compound. An initial list:

Classifier, compound, fingerspelling – one handed, fingerspelling – two handed, fingerspelled loan sign, character sign, assimilated compound, compound, negative incorporation, clitic, affix, initialized sign, phrase, inflected verb, uninflected verb, locational verb, noun-verb pair, repeating or non-repeating signs, numbers, gestural, pantomimic, iconic. Classifiers are subdivided in many ways by different linguists, so some linguists might want to add to the list of classifiers – for example, classifiers for handling objects vs. motion vs. drawing-in-the-air and so on.

2) a second set of choices specifying number of morphemes that defaults to 1 and allows numeric write-ins plus the choices innumerable, uncertain, and many,

3) a fixed choice set for either simultaneous or sequential,

and 4) a free form area for additional information.

I hope that I haven’t forgotten something utterly obvious.

Rachel