we now transition to the topic of semantics or the meaning of signs we
should first note that with any sort of word or sign and whatever signed or
spoken language that you're referring to
there are two types of meanings
there's the referential meaning or what the dictionary says the word means
and then there's the connotation of the sign of the word that is
while it might be true that you can say that someone is pretty or that they're
gorgeous and the dictionary definition isn't going to be too different
the connotation is quite different or even more so if you were to use a term
like sexy or hot
while the shades of meaning are hard to differentiate in terms that a dictionary
could write down there is a feeling associated with certain words that goes
beyond the dictionary definition and that's the connotation
they're actually two things that connotation can represent
on the one hand connotation can represent the social meaning that is who
uses that word
there are certain words that we know are more prominent in certain populations
there are certain words that girls tend to say more than boys
the words that you find in the North like pop that you don't find in the
South like soda or coke to refer to any type of soda and there are words that
certain ethnic groups tend to use words that are more common in a
particular age groups
that's all social meaning the same goes with signs there are certain signs that
are regionally based other signs that tended to change depending on your age
as well as signs that tend to to change depending on a social group
connotation can also refer to the effective meaning that feeling that goes
with a word
so when you see a word you might say oh that's a word that is this group of
people tend to use that's the social meaning and that's part of the
connotation you can also see a sign/hear a word and say that makes me feel a certain
way or that's trying to give a certain emotion and that's the effective meaning
of the word
this is why you might say that something is comfortable and that has a very
similar meaning at least a similar referential denotative meaning to the
word cozy but cozy gives this feeling this this you know very pleasant very
positive very warm feeling that the word comfortable does not give that's a
difference in effective meaning signs can also be categorized into
relationships we've already talked a little bit about this although we didn't
use these terms we mentioned that sometimes in sign language there's no
hypernyms
there's no category word but we have lots of examples of little hyponyms
for example in ASL we have the sign on animal and that sign animal is a
category
it's a hypernym but within the sign and we have different specific examples
we have Birds dogs and cows and things like that
so those are all hyponyms and we can categorize signs in that way
for example we have the sign feeling which is a hypernym with particular
hyponyms or specifis being the feeling of love or the feeling of hate
or what have you
so we need to be able to think about words in these terms especially those of
you that are going to go on to be interpreters because often times you'll
hear a word that's a particular hyponym in english and in ASL you may not
have that word you may only have a hypernym or vice versa
so you have to think how can you get to that specific meaning similarly signs
have synonyms
while it's true that English has more words it has a higher number of total
words it's called the lexicon the number of words in English
it's bigger in SL we still have certain duplicates words that mean
very similar things so "to like" something and to - use this sign however you
gloss it
they mean something very similar it's hard to differentiate the difference and
both sides are very similar
so synonyms are possible in ASL although they're not as common as they are in
English
similarly antonyms occur when words have opposite meanings or very nearly
opposite meanings
so we have lots of examples of antonyms in ASL
just as we have in English when looking at the meaning of signs
we can also consider the metaphors that undergird these signs that is there are
lots of signs that seem to imply that meaning is buried beneath something else
and this is the idea that depth is complexity
now in the real world depth is not complexity you don't if you want to
understand land you'll dig into it if you want to understand the book you
don't dig it
it's a metaphor it's this idea that we have that on the surface is the easy to
understand and down below is hard to understand
we use it all the time in English as well IN ASL you see this
we talked about the depth or in-depth meaning to understand you know some
understand something completely vs superficially we talk about analyzing as
if we're digging into something depth is seen as complexity
another example in ASL is height is seen as respect
so things that are above being superior or the top being the best or even signs
like best
moving upward showing good as being something that's up and then down being
something that's bad
we also have this metaphor that undergirds our sign language at this
metaphor that the future is in front of us and the past is behind us
we speak that way in English as well these metaphors it turns out aren't just
english or just ASL
they tend to be common metaphors in all languages in the west and we use this
metaphor of time as be moving forward quite frequently
our time signs move forward we talk about predicting which I was looking
back into the past
so lots of signs are built around metaphors these are just three examples
of those
additionally we have certain families of signs that come about
sometimes because of a reason we can identify and sometimes because of a
reason that we can't for example lots of signs related to feeling use this hand
shape so the sign feel for example sad pity
these signs came back and we know historically why we know that
historically these signs were compound signs that use the sign feel and then
something else
so there was feel and then this sign which meant pity which became this sign
so the handshape assimilated and it took over the sign for depressed
pity feel so that's why that signs there similarly the sign negative are the same
family of negative signs we know came about primarily because in Old French
sign language the negation came after the sign
so you would sign like not to mean don't like that's where we got don't like or
good not
that's where we got bad or know not which is how we got no that's why our negative
signs tend to twist out
don't like don't know don't want but some sometimes we don't know why they
are the way that they are for example the sign of- evil signs signs like
selfish devil
these signs- steal these signs use this hand shape and we're not sure what the
connection is this happens in English as well we don't really know why there are
so many English words that start with GL and have to do with light
think about it glitter glamour glow these GL words all have to do
with light or shining in some way and you can probably think of more
we don't know why so sometimes there's a reason that you can see historically
that created the family assigns like feeling being assimilated into lots of
emotion signs or this movement coming from the historical negation in French
sign language and sometimes we don't know the reason like the evil signs
it's important that you recognize that shades of meaning can be given in ASL
just often not given by changing words in English we change the word if
we want to say happy
fine we can compare that to glad which is a little less strong or we can say
something more strong like elated we change the words out and in SL we don't
tend to do that so much instead we change the way that we produce the
signs either we can change the production with a movement morepheme
or with a facial morpheme so we can differentiate between happy and sad or
very happy and very sad
the same with many of these others now that doesn't mean that there are no
other words of course there are
there's the sign thrilled and the side depressed there's the sign wonderful and
the sign terrible
we can certainly find other ways to show shades of meaning it's simply that in
ASL we normally don't change the shade of meaning by changing out the sign
instead we do so by modifying the sign with a movement morepheme or with a
facial morpheme