Recent National Dictionaries of Signs

RECENT NATIONAL DICTIONARIES OF SIGNS1 HarryBornsteinandLillianB. Hamilton Our task is to describe the dictionaries of sign language which have appeared during the past fifteen years in the various nations of the world. In trying to find all the different national dictionaries of sign language, we wrote to every national association of the deaf at least twice. We tried also to contact every other possible source of information. We cannot guarantee that we found every dictionary in existence, but we can assure you a great effort was made to do so. What we found was surprising for if one considers a dictionary simply as a collection of signs together with their definitions, then there are many more dictionaries than we had supposed. And there are more to come. A tabular description of these dictionaries is given in four different tables below. Table I describes the general purpose dictionaries now in print. Table II lists general purpose dictionaries that are now being prepared or in press. Table III lists special purpose dictionaries currently in print, Table IV covers special purpose dictionaries in preparation. There are two observations to be made about the dictionaries in that part of Table I which describes general purpose dictionaries in print in all countries except the United States of America. First, nearly all of them are new. In fact, only four were published more than three years ago. Second, with few exceptions, these new dictionaries contain many more entries than the dictionaries of the past. Often there are 2000 or more entries. Some briefer works such as those in Poland and Finland will soon be replaced by larger ones and the Japanese dictionary is only the first in a 1. Revision of a report presented by Harry Bornstein to the Sixth Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf, Paris, 1971. Recent National Dictionaries Of Signs series. Not being native users of these national sign languages, we cannot pretend to know how complete these dictionaries are. But they clearly represent attempts to describe more of the language of people who must live in today's complex society than has been true in the past. Books containing rudimentary vocabularies of a few hundred signs seem to be on the wane. Other features of European dictionaries should be noted. Gestures are often depicted by still photographs and described verbally. Generally, each sign entry is explained by only one or two synonyms in the national language. Now, we wish to describe the U.S.A. dictionaries which are grouped in the last part of Table 1.Ten dictionaries have been published in the last decade in the United States. The vast majority of these are brief introductions consisting of about 500 signs each. Only the dictionary prepared by Stokoe, Casterline and Croneberg is as comprehensive as the larger European works. Excepting this last mentioned dictionary for the moment, let us note a few differences from the European dictionaries. First, most of these dictionaries depict signs by line drawings rather than photographs. American authors apparently believe that line drawings are clearer than photographs and show movement better. The second principal characteristic of many American dictionaries is that they appear to make special efforts to teach the reader how to make and/or remember the signs. Whether they do this any better than the European dictionaries is debatable. Frankly, it is difficult to understand the very large number of introductory works that seem designed to do substantially the same thing. Nevertheless, as will be described later, efforts to produce new dictionaries in the U. S. seem to be as plentiful now as they have been in the past. At this time we would like to point out some important differences between sign language dictionaries and the typical dictionary for any spoken language. Almost all of the latter consist of alphabetic lists of words with their pronunciations, definitions, etymologies and other information. The significant point to note is that the definitions, synonyms, and other information are given in the same language as the entry word itself. Moreover, dictionaries generally provide several definitions and alternative meanings in different contexts. This is not the case TABLE I - GENERAL PURPOSE DICTIONARIES IN PRINT Country Date Author...