ASLwrite
ASLwrite is a somacheirographic writing system that developed from si5s. It was created to be an open-source, continuously-developing orthography for American Sign Language, trying to capture the nuances of ASL's features. ASLwrite is currently used by no more than a handful of people, primarily revolving around discussions happening on Facebook and, previously, Google Groups. However, it is currently spreading, with comic strips, posters and more becoming available.
Its core components are digits, locatives, marks and movements which are written in a fairly rigid order from left to right. Its digits are representations of handshapes – or the configuration of the hand and fingers – where the locatives represent locations on the body, the marks represent anything from location to small movements to facial expressions and the movements indicate the movement of the hands in space by modifying the digits.
The order of the writing is from left to right, top to bottom, with locatives or certain marks often beginning words. Sentences are ended by the full stop mark. Questions in written ASL are denoted by eyebrow marks bounding the question not unlike Spanish's "¿ ?." Question words or wh-questions in ASL can also form the interrogative.
There are in total 105 characters in ASLwrite with 67 digits, five diacritic marks, twelve locatives, sixteen extramanual marks and five movement marks.
Since its creation, it has evolved to include more digits, locatives, movements and marks as well as modify those already present.
History
, a system built from SignWriting, was first proposed by Robert Arnold in his 2007 Gallaudet thesis A Proposal of the Written System for ASL. The ASLwrite community split from Arnold upon his decision to maintain si5s as a private venture with ASLized after the publication of his and Adrean Clark's book How to Write American Sign Language. Today, notes:Type of system
ASLwrite is a somacheirographic system meaning that it represents the body and hands and relays cheremic information. However, it also incorporates logographs and is featural.Description
The general principle is to capture a single ASL word per segment, from left to right, registering non-manual feature, location, handshape, movement and general orientation. It imagines the writer/speaker is looking down at their hands or viewing words from the profile such that words can be made either as if seen from straight-on or from one's profile.The digibet captures handshape information as well as orientation, movement and some locations. Locatives are characters that capture location, though handshape diacritics like edge do capture some locations such as edge of palm. Diacritics, such as movements, modify handshapes and can indicate small movements or small orientations. Movements themselves are fairly flexible in their shapes and orientations, which makes digitising this script difficult.
From left to right, up to down, this is the order in which to write characters:
- 1) Non-manual marks – Often, this is seen as raised or lowered eyebrows, but it can include body or mouth marks such as shoulder-shift and teeth-clench.
- 2) Frontal or profile locatives – Captures the same location information, just from two perspectives. An example is the shoulder locative is either a shoulder frontal locative that is written above or below the handshape.
- 3) Handshapes – Can be written before or after the locative. A handshape can be oriented in 360º depending its location and is written at the end of its movement path if there is one. Each handshape present is written, and when more than one handshape is written, a movement must be present.
- 3a) Diacritics / movements – Written as a part of the handshape, though larger movements or movements that affect multiple handshapes is written after.
- 4) Movements – Larger movements or movements that affect multiple handshapes. When a handshape changes without overt movement, the handshapes are written left-to-right with a single movement below similar to an underline.
- 5) Non-manual & punctuation marks – These are questioning marks such as why, who, how and how. The stop mark is denoted by a "o" mark.
Digibet
Diacritics
There are five diacritics, of which one is a movement diacritic. They are: Hinge, Rotational, Rattle, Flutter and Edge.Movement
Movements are flexible and thus hard to capture in a digital or non-handwritten fashion. The movements are diverse and aim to capture the movements of the hands, arms and body. There are three points – an endpoint, a firmpoint and a contactpoint –, an orbit mark, a steering and a crank mark as well as the movement mark or line. The movement line follows the path of the hand and can be as clean or as erratic as possible. The points denote the end of a handshape's path and the degree to which the motion is made. A contact point denotes an imaginary or in-the-air point with the contactpoint ending at a location and noted as being a firm ending with the firmpoint. The orbit mark indicates a central "point" around which the handshapes orbit; for orbital paths cut short, one would use a steering mark, and for parallel cranking motions, the crank mark would be used.Locatives
The locatives are characters that denote a specific location on or near the signer's body. They are presented from a face-on and side-view. The two sub-classifications are frontal and profile locatives.Non-manual marks
Non-manual marks vary quite significantly and can only be placed at the beginning or end of words or phrases. Eyebrow marks are denoted before and after the word in question thus bounding the words that are modified by eyebrow marks. They are called: Raised, Knit, Wan, Slanted and Squint. Questioning marks exist in ASL as logographs that denote ASL's wh-questions such as WHO or FOR-FOR. They are placed after a closed word's or phrase's second eyebrow mark and can exist as an entire sentence alone. Mouth marks are characters that relay what action the mouth is doing. It is placed inside the first eyebrow mark.Body movements
Body movements are non-manual, non-facial features such as shoulder shift or head nod. They, as well as nose crinkle , stand alone and can be inserted anywhere, inside and outside of eyebrow marked phrases.Writing samples
means Yes? in ASL composed of,, and where the raised eyebrow marks at the beginning and the end indicate it is a yes/no question, and the hinge mark denotes that the S handshape digit makes a nodding motion. The circular point at the end is a full stop mark indicating the end of the sentence. Unlike in English writing, the full stop mark is employed for all sentences, even questions. Breaks in the sentence, as seen below, are denoted by the shoulder shift mark.The text on the right is from Chapters 1:2-4 of the Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible. The first quoted text is the verse in English and Hebrew with the second in ASL gloss.