Relationships between transcription systems and sign language analysis

In this presentation, Dr. Scott Liddell describes the differences between two ASL transcription systems-- the popular Stokoe notation system (1960) and the phonetic segmental system. The Stokoe system has been in use by many researchers but there are difficulties in describing the morphology of signs and noting how signs are changed or formed. There are three parts to a sign in Stokoe's system: location, handshape, and movement. It doesn't have the flexibility to recognize signs that do not fit this model. The advantages of using the phonetic segmental system is that it has the ability to note the changes in the formation of a sign in a compound sign, numbers and fingerspelled letters are recognized as signs due to movement-hold patterns, inflectional processes, verb agreement, and other grammatical features. He closes the presentation by suggesting there will be future models of sign structure to consider in analyzing ASL in more depth which is important for validating the legitimacy of ASL as a language.