Words in Hand

There are several points to notice in the way Maureen presented her information, and she does use the sign 'in' to show the old lady lives in the house. But did you notice how she positioned the house? Once she located it in space, she can place other objects in relation to that house, for example trees. She's not only placing the sign house in that position, she points at it to show it is there too.

That is something you will see a lot of in BSL. Sometimes, as in this case, the pointing emphasises the location. In other cases it allows a sign to refer to an item, without having to repeat the sign.

Did you notice in that small extract Maureen gives the sign for house four times, again and again, and always in the same place. It's like she's trying to make sure that we have a clear picture and she is adding information at the same time. She's telling us it is a beautiful house, a cottage surrounded by trees. In the last case, she keeps one hand as the cottage and uses 'surrounded by' with this hand. And then this same hand changes into the sign for tree, moving to show there are lots of trees and that they are all around the house. The puffed cheeks show what a lot of trees there were, like this.

You've noticed already that Maureen uses her left hand when we are expected to our right hand, because she is left handed. But in signing, she is flexible as to which is her dominant hand. For most of us signing is right handed, but for Maureen it's left handed. It can be either. It can be difficult for people like myself – who are right handed – to sign like Maureen.

When Maureen shows the rats going under the floorboards, she uses her right hand to show the floor and her left hand to show that the rats are really under the floorboards. If we are signing right handed, you need to swap your hands over and the idea is the same.

Maureen also uses separate signs for 'under' before she does an 'existence' sign, like this.

Remember in the previous two videotapes we talked about classifier handshapes, and how the handshape gives us a clue as to the object we are talking about. These handshapes are often used when we want a sign to give locative information. If I want to say there are two cars, one behind the other, I could sign something like this. Using two flat handshapes to show the cars. If I signed it with this handshape, I could show there is one person behind another.

So let us look now at a piece from Gerry's story of Football Crazy. Try to notice the two main points: firstly, notice the way Gerry uses classifier handshapes, especially when he is giving locational information, and secondly, how the relative position of one hand to another gives important information about location.

Let's sit back and enjoy a little bit of football.