The American Sign Language Handshape Dictionary - Hardcover

Tennant, Richard A.; Brown, Marianne Gluszak

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1563680432 ISBN 13: 9781563680434

Publisher: Gallaudet University Press,U.S., 1998

Synopsis

Now, students and others interested in learning American Sign Language (ASL) can look up specific signs without needing to know their meaning in English beforehand. The American Sign Language Handshape Dictionary can help users locate a sign whose meaning they have forgotten, or help them find the meaning of a new sign they have just seen for the first time. Instead of offering a conventional alphabetical arrangement of English words and their corresponding signs, The ASL Handshape Dictionary organizes more than 1,600 ASL signs by 40 basic handshapes and includes detailed descriptions on how to form each sign. In easy-to-follow style, The ASL Handshape Dictionary explains how signs are used in ASL structure and presents clear, explicit directions on how to identify a sign and its meaning in the specific context of its use. A complete English word index provides the option of referring to an alphabetical listing of English terms to locate an equivalent sign or choice of signs.

About this title

Review

Look up the sign, find the word! It presents students, sign-language teachers, and Deaf people alike with a genuinely innovative resource to hone communication skills in both ASL and English.

From the Author

There are unsuspected advantages of this unique format.
In the beginning, our only goal was to create a two way sign language dictionary, one in which a student could look up a sign and find its English gloss. Once the codification for ordering the signs was developed and this two-way goal was reached, several advantages of a dictionary in this format began to emerge. There was no need to repeat illustrations for those signs that have several English glosses, so the resulting reference became very compact. The various English interpretations of a sign all appear with the one illustration; making the work an English vocabulary builder for a Deaf child as well as a clear example of the vitality of American Sign Language for the student learning sign The format allows plenty of room for a complete description of the formation and execution of each sign. The notations accompanying each illustration bring the noun-verb pairs into focus as well as pointing out appropriate personification of certain verbs. The teacher of American Sign Language will be especially pleased to see that amended handshapes are illustrated and applied in addition to the basic fingerspelling shapes. As new signs are introduced to the class, the student, by making a note of the classification symbols for that sign, has both a memory device and a reference to his text to take with him from class. We hope that with a small amount of review of the 40 handshapes used in this dictionary and the order assigned to them that students and teachers will find "The American Sign Language Handshape Dictionary" a great text and an easy to use, comprehensive, two-way reference.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gallaudet University Press,U.S.
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1563680432
• ISBN 13: 9781563680434
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 408
• Illustrator: Nelson-Metlay Valerie