Subjects

Glossary: A-J

Ameslan

Ameslan = American Sign Language. Old term from the 1960s.

ASL

It is an acronym for American Sign Language, a visual-manual language that is indigenous to American Deaf community in the U.S. and Canada.

audism

"The notion that one is superior based on one's ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears." -- coined by Tom Humphries, 1975.

Auslan

Australian Sign Language used in Australian Deaf/Auslan community.

cinematic vocabulary

cinematic devices such as angle, zoom, cut, speed, etc. used in sign language.

culture

The beliefs, values, learned behavior, language, and customs of a group of people passed on from generation to genderation.

fingerspelling

a way of manually spelling a spoken/written word of another language using its written alphabet.

idiom

a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words.

inflection

"A modulation of a sign that changes or adds to the meaning of that sign. In ASL, inflections usually involve changes in teh movement of a sign and can indicate such things as the subject and object of the verb and the frequency or duration of an event." -- Baker and Cokely, 1980.

interpreting

Interpreting faciliates communication between two parties of different languages (and cultures).

interjection

a word or a short exclamation that conveys emotion.

Gestuno

It is equivalent to Esperanto. It is an old term for the contemporary term International Sign (or International Sign Language).

gesture

"neuromuscular activity (bodily actions, whether or not communicative); as semiotic (ranging from spontaneously communicative gestures to more conventional gestures); and as linguistic (fully conventionalized signs and vocal articulations)." -- David Armstrong, William C. Stokoe, and Sharman E. Wilcox

gloss

"Glossing is the practice of writing a morpheme-by-morpheme 'translation' using English words. Glosses indicate what the individual parts of the native word mean. Glosses do not provide a true translation, which would instead use appropriate English ways of saying "The same thing." For example, German Es geht mir gut may be glossed as "It goes to-me good." -- Wilcox