Words in Hand

Hello again. In this tape we are going to look again at the link between the form of a sign and its meaning. In the last tape we tended to ignore this part of signing structure, focusing instead on the actual form of the sign - the way it is made.

But if we look again at Gerry's story of dreaming of sailing, then we can see there are a number of signs that give us an idea of what they mean. Yes, we can see the structure, handshape, movement and so on we talked about in the last tape. But we also can find some idea - sometimes any way - of what signs mean.

Let us pick a few examples, and then you can look at that bit on the tape again in a few minutes.

I'm sure that you had no problems in understanding the sign for 'sail' or 'sailing'. That sign gives some idea of the shape and the movement of sailing.

There were a couple of signs for 'lie down'. Like this. This sign seems to give an idea of lying down flat, with your two legs shown by these two fingers. Another sign seems to show ‘lying in bed’, holding the covers.

So we begin to get some idea of how a sign's form can link to its meaning.

Let's look at two more examples. The sign for 'fire', which might be showing the flames moving. The sign for 'ripple' – again we are getting some understanding of the action of the water. The sign for 'rock' gives us a little clue as to the shape of the rocks.

There is one other group of signs that is a little bit more difficult to explain, yet it seems to be appropriate to what it means. These are signs like: bad, remember, think, and dream.

Why do we feel those signs are particularly appropriate? It seems to be because we have a convention in sign language – and maybe in our culture – that links part of the body with different notions. So the head is linked with the idea of thinking and knowledge. The chest and the heart is linked with feelings and emotions.

Some of those signs also use particular handshapes which seem to have a special meaning. So that ‘bad’ sign relates to this handshape. It doesn’t look like bad, but we associate the handshape with that idea. Again, we see more of these conventions in the other extracts.