Words in Hand

What an amazing visit to Italy. I'm glad it was Clive, not me. What a nightmare.

I expect you spotted all the classifiers he used. It gave us a lot of information about the size of objects, their shape, and how to hold things. And also, he used some of the 'people' and 'vehicle' classifiers that I was talking about earlier.

Let us look at when he talked about his passport. The sign looks like a book. But when he puts the passport into his briefcase, he is holding it and using this classifier. Or when he is actually looking at the passport, realising he must remember his passport, he points at his palm - "I must remember this." - before putting it away.

The briefcase is shown by the way we hold it. We hold it and show the zip and putting the passport in. So we know from this sign that it is a briefcase, and what type of briefcase. Because it's not one that you hold like this. That is a different briefcase and you couldn't put it under your arm. We know that Clive is using a thinner briefcase with a zip, held under his arm.

Later on, he talks about his plane ticket. At that time, his sign shows us the shape of the ticket: it's rectangular. You know yourself from when you fly what a plane ticket looks like. You can't sign ticket like a railway ticket. It's a ticket like this.

When he talks about the paper that replaces his lost passport, we get information about how he looks at that piece of paper, and holds it. It's only a thin sheet, so he has to hold it like this so he can read it. And when he shows it to another man, he's still showing the shape of the paper.

One thing you should have noticed is that Clive often uses his left hand to show the paper or the passport that's written on. There's a few signs in BSL that make use of the left hand to show paper or a book, or part of a book. Think of the sign for register - the sign shows how you note things in a list.

Or the idea of a topic. So if you are reading something - and again that is another sign that uses the left hand. You know that the palm is a book, a page. You can point at the topic. You can amend the sign for reading to study: reading and learning.

So in all of these cases, the left hand is a proform, replacing a book or piece of paper or another item we've already mentioned before.

Let us look at how Clive talks about travelling in his story. What different ways of transport are there, like a car or coach? We know he goes by train, coach and plane. What does the train look like - do you realise? It's obvious that it has to be underground. How do we know that it is underground? Well, we've seen it on a previous tape where Gerry is talking about the motorcycle. In this case, the moving hand is below ground. When Clive talks about the coach, he changes classifier position and puts it above ground, moving it in the same way.

The plane is as we have already seen. But is this sign a classifier or not? It tells us information about the shape of that plane and its wings. But when you look at airplanes, they are all different, so you can see that we have a frozen classifier shape. When it moves in a special way, we can clearly tell and know it's a plane. Maybe it is taking off, or maybe it is flying straight, or maybe - like you saw Clive talking about - it's a plane landing.

I expect you also saw a number of times where Clive talks about people. You saw people - remember on the train? - as they came down from the street and on to the train, through the doors of the train. When he reached the end of the line, the doors opened and people got off the train and headed up to the exit. In the same way, when the plane arrived, people stood up and got off. And then they queued for customs. There Clive talked about wanting to be the last one, so he used a ‘people' classifier to show him moving to the back of the queue. And then you can see him move forward.

It's important to notice how much information we get from that small amount of space - and time - by using classifiers. Just think about how long English order signing would take if we had to say every English word: "All the people went into the underground station and got on to the train." This is a long English sentence, but Clive - by using his classifiers - shows this so much quicker and cleaner: like this. They come from the street, downstairs, wait for the train to come, the doors open, and the people get into the train.

Another example of a quick and easy way to convey information is the way the five men grabbed Clive. You can see the classifier for five men, and the classifier for Clive, and then the grab. You might have seen on the other tapes the way you can use more than one finger to show two or more people.

When Clive arrives in Italy, he gave us information about his skiing holiday. Did you notice the sign for ski? It makes use of classifiers for holding the poles. So it goes back to the idea of handling again. But in the same way he talks about people going down the slope - he shows their legs, like this. He talks about skiing, and then shows people going down the slopes.

People in their wheelchairs are shown by the holding action, by the wheels being moved.

You may have noticed the way Clive talks about the barrier. The barrier goes up and down. But in one part, Clive shows how people are going through the barrier, but he is waiting. And then the barrier goes up, he walks through, and the barrier shuts behind him.

Once you begin to get a feel for the way deaf people use classifiers in BSL, you will probably find yourself tuning into BSL much more completely. You will find it easier to understand things. Let's see if you caught this idea by letting us look at another bit of the tape where Clark talks about the Deaflympic Games. What information are you getting from this? From his use and way of signing with classifiers?