BSL notes

Grammar.

• 4 types of placement in syntactic space: topographical (literal), abstract (most common - e.g. choosing between two things, place them in space); hierarchical (top-down; indicates power/status; used to indicate e.g. family structures, or conversations with superiors/inferiors, via where sign/eyeline/etc are placed); numerical
  
• proforms and classifiers (placing things within space; types of thing; the evolution of the sign for "telephone"!)

Politics. Mostly about sign song: it's of necessity SSE rather than BSL, and ends up being incredibly unidiomatic (SSE of "cross the river" is CROSS [the generic object]-RIVER rather than RIVER-CROSS [the proform/topographic placement]. Not of any particular interest to d/Deaf culture, and sometimes seen as patronising/appropriative in addition to irrelevant; but can be a very useful practice tool for people learning BSL because it makes you sign faster (than you think you can), learn a lot of vocab, and helps cement vocab (in the same way that learning words to music is generally easier than learning words in isolation). We did also watch a brief video clip about the youngest child of two very-famous-in-UK-d/Deaf-culture people (at least one of whom is involved in Deafinitely Theatre IIRC), whose name is given on her birth certificate both as it would be written/spoken and in the notation used for transcribing signs.

( Vocabulary )

Homework.

• sign along to Abba's I have a dream every other day or so
  
• pick a song to sign along to; work out as much of it as possible, and bring it along next time
  
• practise describing things on a table (record self to make sure using eyeline/getting consistent surface)
  
• practise describing a picture (ditto)