chaos of the initial world” (No.20). The direction of the glyphs is flexible; however, in some cases, it may indicate different meanings. For example, “fir” can be written either as 木 or 木木. The glyph 木 means “moon” when it is horizontal (木木), and “month” when it is vertical (木木).

A second element is the variety in the meaning of a glyph. One glyph may represent two semes and, therefore, two radicals. For example, the pictogram 棵 can be a radical meaning of either “tree” or “wood”. Moreover, it uses pine tree as the prototype of trees.

As a third aspect, the radicals may lie within the glyphs, and yet they are not used analytically. For example, the glyphs 棵 “die” (No. 291) and 棵 “lie down” (No. 306) share the concept of an individual lying down. However, there is not a single character in which only a figure of an individual lying down exists without indicators. For another instance, as mentioned, the glyphs of plants are often depicted by three branches or five branches. Nevertheless, there is not a glyph representing the general notion of three-branch plant or five-branch plant.

## 4. Latin Alphabets for Semantic Index

Multiple indexes, including phonetic index and radical index, are available in contemporary dictionaries (e.g., *Xinhua Dictionary*). Li, Zhang, and He (1972) provided indexes according to the IPA transcription and stroke numbers of Chinese glosses of each Dongba glyph. In other words, the alphabetic order and semantic order do not exclude each other.

For the character names, it is necessary to set up an orthography for transcribing IPA into Naxi *pinyin*. Naxi *pinyin* is designed for the standard Naxi language (Dayan dialect). Its Romanized letters can unify the various sets of symbols applied to transcribe Dongba glyphs pronunciations.<fnref n="24" />

However, Naxi *pinyin* needs to expand the inventory of notations in order to transcribe other dialects of Moso People. According to He and Jiang (1985, pp. 130–133), there is no contrast between voiced consonants and nasalized consonants, velar and uvular consonants, dental and retroflex stops. Therefore, nasalized consonantal initials, such as /mb/, /nd/, /ŋg/, are transcribed as /bb/, /dd/, /gg/, and no symbols for voiced consonantal initials exist. There are no symbols for neither uvular nor

<footnote n="24">24. Naxi *pinyin* orthography: /p/, /pʰ/, /b/, /m/, /f/, /t/, /tʰ/, /d/, /n/, /l/, /k/, /kʰ/, /g/, /ŋ/, /h/, /tʃ/, /tʃʰ/, /dʒ/, /c/, /tʃɛ/, /tʃʰ/, /dʒ/, /ξ/, /z/, /ts/, /tsʰ/, /dʒ/, /s/, /z/, /i/, /y/, /æ/, /ɑ/, /o/, /u/, /v/, /ə/, /ər/, /iə/, /uæ/, /uɑ/, /uə/. As for a concise key-in convention, in N4877 and N4878, the letter /y/ stands for /ɣ/ in Li, Zhang, and He (1972), /a/ for /ɑ/, /e/ for /ɛ/, and /ə/ for /ʌ/.</footnote>
retroflex consonantal initials since these phonetic values appear in con-
ditional contexts. Nevertheless, minimal pairs of these consonantal ini-
tials exist in dialects of the Naish languages. For example, the contrasts
between voiced initials and nasalized initials are attested in Li, Zhang,
and He (1972), whose phonemic system reflects one of the western di-
alects in Ludian area. For another instance, Ruke People, an interme-
diate ethnic group of Moso People, distinguish voiced consonants and
nasalized consonants and dental and retroflex stops. Ruke Dongba cul-
ture preserves rituals different from the Naxi Dongba context (He and
Guo, 1985, p. 40). Dongba glyphs of Ruke People are recorded as an
independent category in Li, Zhang, and He (1972, pp. 125–127). It is
possible that the repertoire of Dongba pictographs will incorporate the
Ruke Dongba pictographs transcribed in their phonemic system.

A more complete Latin alphabet for Naxi can be found on the “Om-
niglot” website, including symbols for both voiced consonants and
nasalized consonants, edited by Michael Peter Füstumum and Wolfram
Siegel.<fnref n="25" /> Another main addition to the Omniglot version would be the
retroflex initials. The author suggests inserting an “r” after the alveo-
lar initials to stand for their retroflex counterparts. Letter “r” already
exists in the current Latin alphabet for Naxi. It is used as an initial
and, sometimes, trills, when it appears in the end of the syllable. Its
usage to indicate a retroflex is not confused with its other functions and
does not increase the number of letters in Naxi *pinyin*. Table 6 displays
an expanded inventory of Latin alphabets for transcribing Naish lan-
guages. In comparison to the current Naxi *pinyin*, the modifications by
Omniglot are highlighted in orange and the additions by the author are
highlighted in green.

<table><caption>TABLE 6. Expanded Latin Alphabet for Naish Languages</caption><thead><tr><th colspan="11">Initials</th></tr><tr><th colspan="4">stop</th><th colspan="2">nasal</th><th colspan="2">approx. fricative</th><th rowspan="2">f[f]</th><th rowspan="2">v[v]</th></tr><tr><th>labial</th><th>p[p']</th><th>b[b]</th><th>bb[b]</th><th>nb[mb]</th><th>m[m]</th><th>l[l]</th><th>(/r/:[r])<sup>26</sup></th></tr><tr><th>dental</th><th>t[t']</th><th>d[t]</th><th>dd[d]</th><th>nd[nd]</th><th>n[n]</th><th>l[l]</th><th></th><th></th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>velar</th><td>k[k']</td><td>g[k]</td><td>gg[g]</td><td>mg[ŋg]</td><td>ng[ŋ]</td><td></td><td></td><td rowspan="2">h[x]([h]) w[ɣ]([k])</td></tr><tr><th>retroflex</th><td>tr[t']</td><td>dr[t]</td><td>ddr[d]</td><td>ndr[ŋd]</td><td>nr[ŋ]</td><td>lr[l]</td><td></td></tr><tr><th colspan="11">affricate</th></tr><tr><th>dental</th><td>c[ts']</td><td>z[ts]</td><td>zz[dz]</td><td>nz[ndz]</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>s[s]</td><td>ss[z]<sup>27</sup></td></tr><tr><th>alveo-palatal</th><td>q[ɔ̃]</td><td>j[ɔ̃]</td><td>jj[dz]</td><td>nj[ndz]</td><td>ni[n.]</td><td></td><td></td><td>x[c]</td><td>y[z]</td></tr><tr><th>retroflex</th><td>ch[tɛ̃]</td><td>zh[tš]</td><td>rh[dz]</td><td>nr[ndz]</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>sh[š]</td><td>r[z]</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote n="25">25. Omniglot is an online encyclopaedia of writing system and languages built by Simon Ager. URL: https://www.omniglot.com/writing/naxi.htm.</footnote>
<table><thead><tr><th colspan="11">Glides</th></tr><tr><th colspan="2">u[w]</th><th colspan="2">i[j]</th><th colspan="5">Rhymes</th><th colspan="4">Tones</th></tr><tr><th>i [i]([i], [i])</th><th>u[u]</th><th>iu[y]</th><th>ei[e]</th><th>ai[æ]</th><th>a[a]</th><th>o[o]</th><th>e[ə]</th><th>er[ə]</th><th>-l: high</th><th>-: mid</th><th>-q: low</th><th>-f: rising</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>ee[u]</td><td>v[ɣ]</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

## 5. Conclusion

The present study reviewed the achievements of the related project, including the implementations of key-in systems, fonts, and Unicode. The author has shown that a critical issue for the Unicode recognition of Dongba pictographs is to build up a comprehensive character list of this writing system. The dictionaries provide valuable sources on the Dongba script, from which a complete repertoire of Dongba glyphs can be elicited.

Most of the dictionaries apply a semantic categorization of Dongba pictographs, while a few use an alphabetical approach according to the phonetic transcriptions. The current semantic categorizations adopted by Dongba Dictionaries can be refined to a more detailed semantic index. Glyphs sharing one common pictograph and semantically connected with each other can be grouped as one subcategory.

The pictograph, the semantic component giving the core idea of the glyph, may correspond to the notion of “radical”. Similarly to the early Chinese dictionary *Shuowen Jiezi*, a Dongba radical can be either a simple pictograph or a ligature. Each radical represents an entry for the semantic index. Such semantic index is conventionally implemented into the Chinese dictionaries.

The elicitation of radicals reveals the features of similar markers in pictographic writing systems. Through an in-depth examination of the shared components among Dongba glyphs, the author pointed out three types of ‘loose’ correspondences between their forms and meanings. Further on, this research can also contribute to our understanding of how similar markers arose in mature logographic systems like

<footnote n="26">26. The phoneme /r/ is elicited from Li, Zhang, and He (1972). The phonetic value is [r] as an initial. If this symbol is at the end of a rhyme, it indicates that the rhyme is a retroflexive vowel (ibid., p. XXIII).</footnote>

<footnote n="27">27. Some dialects have nasalized voiced fricative initials. In those cases, it can be transcribed as /nss/.</footnote>
Chinese logographs, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan glyphs (Handel, 2017, p. 3).

Other indexes, such as the alphabetical index of the phonetic transcriptions or English glosses and the number of strokes of their Chinese glosses, are not excluded by the semantic index. Moreover, multiple indexes could allow searching for glyphs through different channels. The major radical and related radical provide more paths to get to one glyph and, therefore, more analysis' options to the grammatological feature of one glyph. The alphabetical index depends on the Naxi *pinyin* transcription, which requires more Latin letters for a possible extended character list involving dialectal vocabularies.

*Acknowledgement*

I would like to thank very much Prof. Francis Bond, from Nanyang Technical University, for his valuable contribution to the use of terminology in this paper and for having inspired me.

## A. Dongba Radicals of Astronomy, Geography, Humanity, and Human Body Parts Based on Li, Zhang, and He (1972)

(The English terms are quoted from Li, Zhang, and He, 2001, pp. 419–421, translated by Tseng Chao-yueh.)

### A.1. Phenomena Connected With Heaven 天文類 (15/117)

<table><tr><td>攵<br>/mee/</td><td>⊕<br>/nii/</td><td>艹<br>/hei<br>mei/<br>moon</td><td>艹<br>/hei/</td><td>艹-<br>/geeq/</td><td>艹+<br>/mbo/</td><td>艹~<br>/ssiuq/</td></tr><tr><td>sky</td><td>sun</td><td></td><td>month</td><td>star</td><td>star;<br>bright</td><td>constel-<br>lation of<br>dzo<br>(hybrid<br>of yak<br>and<br>cattle)</td></tr><tr><td>≡<br>/hai/</td><td>abb<br>/heeq/</td><td>☆<br>/mbei/</td><td>☆<br>/jiq/</td><td>☆<br>/nrur/</td><td>/ciul/</td><td>☆<br>/mi xil<br>jjiq teeq/<br>rainbow</td></tr><tr><td>wind</td><td>rain</td><td>snow</td><td>cloud</td><td>dew</td><td>lightening</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>‡<br>/rheeq/<br>time</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr></table>
## A.2. Geographical Phases 地理類 (13/112)

<table><tr><td>ddiuq/</td><td>njoq/</td><td>jjoqnar-<br>uallua/</td><td>mboq/</td><td>lv</td><td>aiq</td></tr><tr><td>ground</td><td>mountain</td><td>scared<br>mountain</td><td>slope</td><td>stone</td><td>cliff</td></tr><tr><td>/jjiq/</td><td>/tel/</td><td>/chv/</td><td>/heel/</td><td>/ree/</td><td>/lee<br>ddraiq/</td></tr><tr><td>water</td><td>drop</td><td>nitrate</td><td>lake</td><td>road</td><td>field<br>corner</td></tr></table>

## A.3. Human Natures, Relations, and Movements 人文類 (40/341)

### A.3.1. 人文類-1: Natures and Relations (13)

<table><tr><td>/xi/</td><td>/ggv<br>zzeeq/</td><td>/lei bbv/</td><td>/coq/</td><td>/rvq/</td><td>/mil/</td></tr><tr><td>human</td><td>Guzo<br>People</td><td>Bai<br>People</td><td>human</td><td>enemy</td><td>woman</td></tr><tr><td>/nzeeq/<br>to sit<br>(sitting<br>figures)</td><td>/jje aq/<br>Indian</td><td>/nzee/<br>manager</td><td>/shee/<br>dead</td><td>ggv<br>body</td><td>/ddeeq/<br>big</td><td>/baq/<br>open<br>hair</td></tr></table>

### A.3.2. 人文類-2: Movements (27)

<table><tr><td>/co/<br>to jump</td><td>/ceel/<br>to kneel</td><td>/toq/<br>to lean<br>on</td><td>/ndol/<br>to fall</td><td>/niol/<br>to<br>tremble</td><td>/xa/<br>to run</td><td>/gua/<br>to step<br>across</td></tr><tr><td>/sseel/<br>to fold</td><td>/dee/<br>to get up</td><td>/lvq/<br>to lift</td><td>/nziq/<br>to fly</td><td>/mbi/<br>to wee</td><td>/lerq/<br>to speak</td><td>/mbvq/<br>to climb</td></tr><tr><td>/ggvq/<br>to bow</td><td>/tail/<br>to hit<br>with<br>head</td><td>/bal/<br>to paste</td><td>/bol/<br>to bring</td><td>/hai/<br>to bring<br>knife</td><td>/daiq/<br>to pull</td><td>/ndiul/<br>to chase</td></tr></table>
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# Transcribing Sign Languages
With TYPANNOT:
The Typographic System That Retains
and Displays Layers of Information

Claire Danet, Dominique Boutet†, Patrick Doan,
Claudia Savina Bianchini, Adrien Contesse, Léa Chèvrefils,
Morgane Rébulard, Chloé Thomas & Jean-François Dauphin

*Abstract.* There are more than 140 sign languages (SLs) in the world and studying them is a relatively recent field of research (starting in the 1960s). Linguists have the need to represent the different levels of gestures that make up the signs in order to analyze the way SLs work. Such transcription requires the use of a dedicated graphic system (Slobin et al., 2001).

TYPANNOT, the transcription system presented in this article, is a typographic system that allows the description of all formal features of SLs. Our contribution to the field of grapholinguistics is a phonological model and a transcription system for SLs that are rooted in the articulatory possibilities of the signer's body. Compared to existing graphematic systems, our approach of SLs description is both phonological, allowing descriptions of the different articulatory structures (low level) involved in SLs, and logographical, allowing users to read the transcriptions from a unified perspective (high level).

We will detail the design principles that drive the development of such a typographic system, the graphematic model that derives from linguistic study, and the tools that allow researchers to use TYPANNOT to its fullest capacities.

This article also outlines the kinesiological approach (Boutet, 2018), which TYPANNOT uses, noting radical changes in the way researchers should look at meaning through gesture. This approach opens new perspectives in researching movement itself as a central source of meaning in human communication via gesture.

## Introduction

Sign languages (SL), of which there exist at least 144 worldwide (Ethnologue.com, 2020), are gestural languages with grammatical/linguistic structures based on body expression (Sandler and Lillo-Martin, 2006).

Claire Danet ID 0000-0001-5362-8924

Université de la Sorbonne & Université Technique de Compiègne

claire.danet@gmail.com

Patrick Doan ID 0000-0002-2012-1630, Claudia S. Bianchini ID 0000-0002-4783-1202

Adrien Contesse ID 0000-0002-8997-3321, Léa Chèvrefils ID 0000-0001-9123-1223

Morgane Rébulard ID 0000-0002-8469-9693, Chloé Thomas ID 0000-0002-8562-1249

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*

Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 5.

Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 1009–1037. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-dane

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-7-8, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-9-2
This visuogestural modality means that SLs work in very different ways compared to vocal languages (VL). First, SLs are 4-dimensional (3 space dimensions plus time) by nature and employ spatialization, meaning that grammatical elements manifest in space like on a scene, for example verbs appear to move from the sender to the receiver. Second, SLs can articulate several gestures in parallel, using the entire body to express multiple information simultaneously (Braffort, 1996). If VLs can be seen as monolinear, meaning only one piece of information is being communicated at a time, SLs can be seen as plurilinear (Cuxac, 2001). Third, semiotically speaking, SL signs are iconic: their appearance tends to resemble some aspect of the thing or action being denoted.

Since the 1960s, with the development of linguistic research and the recognition within hearing communities that SLs are full-fledged languages, most linguists have agreed on the phonological<fnref n="1" /> decomposition of SLs into two parameters: (a) manual, such as the configuration of the hand, its orientation in space, its location and its movement; and (b) non-manual, such as gaze, facial expression, and torso posture.

Unfortunately, this consensus didn't translate into the conception and the adoption of a unified transcription system for SLs. Until today, the multi spatial and multi parametric properties of SLs cannot be properly represented by neither a dedicated symbolic system nor a VL description system.

Nevertheless, various attempts for writing SLs do exist, e.g., in France, many historical instances can be cited, such as “Mimography” (Bébian, 1825) and “D’Sign” (Jouison, 1995), or more recently “Signography” (Haouam-Bourgeois, 2007), “Schematization” (Guitteny, 2007) and “SL-video” (Brugeille, 2007). These different graphic forms were created to compensate for the lack of traceability in situations such as teaching SL or sharing artistic expressions (poetry, sign-singing, theater pieces, etc.). Bianchini (2012) even considers that SL writing would be an additional route for hearing people to enter the Deaf world.

With the birth of SL linguistics, and in particular after the research of William Stokoe (1960), different notation systems have emerged. Some were created with the aim of detailed analysis and transcription (among them, Prillwitz et al., 1989; Stokoe, 1960; these are phonographic systems, in which each grapheme transcribes a phoneme. Other, more logo-graphic systems (a grapheme representing an entire lemma, i.e., word), like SignWriting (Sutton, 1995) or Si5s (Augustus, Ritchie, and Stecker, 2013), represent a more functional and accessible approach for the Deaf community.

<footnote n="1">1. Here and throughout the article, phonological is of course referring to the phonetics and phonemics of SLs, in which visual form is abstracted into units of meaning, or phonemes, and we are not using phonological to mean the science of speech sounds.</footnote>
Whatever the motivation for finding ways to represent SLs is, their
visuogestural natures, their spatial and temporal dimensions, as well as
their plurilinearity transform the task into a particularly daunting chal-
lenge (Boutet, 2018).

Keeping in mind those specificities, the GestualScript team at ÉSAD-Amiens<fnref n="2" /> reviewed the existing linguistic models and graphematic systems in order to understand their underlying strengths and limitations (§ 1). This work fueled the design thinking behind the conception of TYPANNOT (§ 2), a typographic system that takes advantage of new technologies to tackle SLs representation problems while adopting a radical perspective in order to completely revisit the existing descriptive models (§ 3).

# 1. Existing SL Representation for Various Scopes

Although pursuing different objectives, SignWriting (SW) and HamNoSys are two examples of notation systems that both rely on a parametric approach to organize the representation of SLs. While SW aims to offer writing within the framework of teaching with SL, HamNoSys is focused on transcribing SLs in order to analyze them systematically. These two distinct perspectives yield different yet complementary principles of graphic representation.

## 1.1. SignWriting (SW): a Representation System for Recognizing SL

In 1974, Valerie Sutton conceived SW, inspired by her previous DanceWriting (1966-74) work and driven by the linguistic research carried out at the University of Copenhagen (Sutton, 2020). This system is aimed at both the teaching and the everyday practice of SL, and is characterized by an anthropomorphic representation of the sign in an attempt to offer a proxy of reality.

First, SL signs are represented by distinct graphic units (graphemes) that correspond to the minimum units that carry meaning in the structure of the language (phonemes), and which take up the main formal characteristics (shapes of the hand, eyes, arms, etc.); this is a so-called phonological level of deconstruction. Next, these graphemes are arranged analogically to the sign space in a thumbnail called a “vignette”

<footnote n="2">2. The GestualScript team, based at the De-sign-e lab of the École Supérieure d'Art et de Design (ÉSAD) d'Amiens, is an interdisciplinary group made of linguists (D. Boutet†, C. Danet, C. S. Bianchini, L. Chevrefils, C. Thomas), designers (P. Doan, M. Rébulard, A. Contesse), and a computer scientist (J.-F. Dauphin). The team's research was partly funded by the French DGLFLF and the Department of Culture.</footnote>
(Fig. 1). They take up the global spatial organization of the SL sign to reproduce its image, like a transfer from reality. This is a so-called logo-graphic level of construction where the different graphemes are brought together to form a unified sign representing a lexical unit.

This makes SW a system with a pictographic tendency since the vignettes reproduce a schematic, stylized, and above all, unified version of the SL sign, thus allowing the user to focus more on the text meaning than on the language structure. This representation, however, can also be considered “alphabetical” since each vignette can be split into glyphs which relate more to phonemes.<fnref n="3" />

<figure><img src="image_154.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Organization of SW glyphs inside a vignette</figcaption></figure>

These glyphs are then arranged non-linearly, leaving the writer considerable expressive freedom, both in the choice of several glyphs that are almost synonymous and of their location. If the only limit to this freedom is keeping the legibility of the thumbnail, this results in a great variability from one writer to another, which limits data comparisons (e.g., when searching for inter-annotator agreement) (Fig. 2).

<figure><img src="image_155.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 2. Freedom in placing some SW glyphs (e.g., movement arrows) may make difficult data comparisons</figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="3">3. The question of the exact nature of SW (alphabetic or featural; phonological or phonetic) is still open but not the subject of this article; for further discussion see Bianchini (2012; 2016).</footnote>
SW is organized in categories and sub-categories (e.g., configuration of the hand, its movement, its dynamics and coordination, etc.); each containing basic glyphs (about 500 in total) to which specific rules apply, a process that generates nearly 37,000 “conjugated” glyphs.

The description of the elements present in a category or subcategory calls on several frames of reference (FoR, § 3.1.2). For example, the movement of the hands is described in an environmental FoR (the movements are directed towards the imaginary walls of a room, the horizontal axis corresponds to the floor, the vertical one to the height of the walls; Fig. 3a), but those of the head and the body are described in a FoR centered on the speaker (the movements are directed towards the sides of the signer, the horizontal axis corresponds to the shoulders, and the vertical axis to the signer's height; Fig. 3b).

(a)(b)(c)(d)

<figure><img src="image_156.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 3. (a) the environmental FoR is used to code hand movement; (b) speaker-centered FoR is used to code head movement; if hand and head movement is coded in the same vignette, two FoRs are present. These can be: (c) collinear, if their axes are superimposed; or (d) non-collinear, involving fragmentation of the representation space</figcaption></figure>

The presence of several FoRs within the same vignette generates a fragmentation of the sign representation space whenever the axes of the different FoRs are non-collinear (not superimposable). If standing, the signer's horizontal axis corresponds to the environmental horizontal axis (the two FoRs are therefore collinear; Fig. 3c), but if bent to the side, the signer's shoulders will no longer be parallel to the floor and therefore the horizontal axis will no longer correspond to the horizontal plane of the room (Fig. 3d).

The flexibility of notation and the large number of glyphs make SW an asset for representing many phenomena. Thanks to its visual evocational power, it is the system most used by educators around the world; however, in the absence of a ductus—a defined procedure specifying the number of strokes, the direction, and the sequence for drawing the sign—signers have no choice but to use SW.
ing the various symbols—writing SW is much more complex than reading SW. Moreover, this makes it difficult for linguists to obtain inter-annotator agreement as well as the ability to query the vignettes in a database. However, apart from the drawing of SW by hand, there is also online input software (SignMaker<fnref n="4" />) available and the system has been coded under the Unicode standard since 2010.

## 1.2. HamNoSys: A Representation System for Analyzing SL

Directly focused on researchers, the Hamburg Notation System (Prillwitz et al., 1989), a.k.a. HamNoSys, is a transcription system based on phonological principles, i.e., each parameter is broken down into phonemes which are represented by glyphs. This approach is an evolution of the one adopted by Stokoe Notation (Stokoe, 1960), the first SL notation system.

Compared to Stokoe Notation, HamNoSys offers a more detailed description of SL phonemes and increases the number of examined parameters (e.g., non-manual parameters, locations outside the signature zone, etc.). Phonemes are represented by around 210 more or less iconic symbols, but while some have their own symbol, others are obtained by composing a basic form with diacritics (e.g., the hand configuration, the movement, etc.). This phonographic system is intended to be inter operational, and therefore aims at international use, compatibility with standard computer display and indexing tools, extension capacity, ergonomic syntax according to the principles of compositionality, syntactic efficiency (e.g., the principles of symmetry), and an iconicity of symbols (for ease of memorization) (Hanke, 2004).

The graphemic equation puts the sign information in linear order from left to right, according to a strict syntax (Fig. 4).

Like SW, HamNoSys changes its point of view. For example, the glyphs representing the hand orientation and movement are related to three perspectives, one from the signer's point of view, the others from above or from the right (Fig. 5, from ibid.).

To use HamNoSys, it is possible to download a font and a dedicated virtual keyboard. HamNoSys is also coded under the Unicode standard. SL signs are encoded in a fully linearized typographic form, which gives the system great flexibility and compatibility with computer tools for displaying and indexing data. However, HamNoSys can be complex to use, especially during the decryption phase, due to the amount of parameters to be processed and the way the characters are composed.

<footnote n="4">4. SignMaker (http://www.signbank.org/signmaker.html); for an analysis of the interface see Bianchini, 2012.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_157.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 4. Organization of HamNoSys glyphs in an equation</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_158.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 5. Multiple points of view within HamNoSys</figcaption></figure>

## 1.3. Conclusions: An External Perspective of SL Representation

This short presentation of SW and HamNoSys has shown the advantages associated with the two main modes of representation that characterize them. The phonographic approach uses a limited inventory of signs corresponding to the SL phonological structure to transcribe them in an efficient and detailed manner; conversely, the logographic approach offers a synthetic and evocative graphic representation by visually transposing the semiotic dimensions of a corporal FOR inherent to all SLs.

It becomes clear that a semiography (linguistic sign notation that refers to the semantic level of a language) that could combine phonographic and iconic trends would be advantageous. On one hand, the phonological structuring makes it possible to isolate the distinctive elements, thus providing an efficient and functional system necessary for transcription. On the other hand, the synthetic and evocative graphic representation preserves the semiotic relationships intrinsically offered by the different spatial and bodily references of these visuogestural languages.

It is worth noting that whatever the pictographic or phonological dominant, the systems of SL representation resort in general to a form of visual iconicity. Indeed, unlike VLs which must use graphic conventions
to represent sounds, SLs can find in writing the figurative dimensions
directly emanating from the visuogestural modality. Translated graph-
ically, the articulated structure of the body and the forms it produces in
space constitute an image that recalls the SL sign all at once. The result
is a remarkably natural spelling, so to speak, but it remains important
to ask questions about its strengths and weaknesses.

Indeed, this immediate readability means that the existing systems
systematically approach the representation of SL as a projection of per-
ceived shapes on a 2-dimensional plane. Although these languages are
deeply rooted and subject to the articulators of the body and their own
geometry, the body is viewed from an external point of view where only
its apparent parameters are described. The problem here is not so much
to have resorted to an external perspective or projection, but to have ig-
nored the intrinsic characteristics of the SL sign. Without them, it is
impossible to know what a representation really corresponds to, given
the superficiality of the projection. In fact, signs are described accord-
ing to what the recipient sees and not what the speaker's body is doing.

Therefore, SW and HamNoSys must multiply the points of view to
account for a gestural phenomenon. These external views changing
from one sign to another (HamNoSys) or even joined in the same de-
scription (SW) may lead to misunderstandings in sign reading and in-
consistencies in analysis.

The linguistic distinction in manual and non-manual parameters
produces dissociation between the different segments of the body,
which disconnects them from their bodily transformations. Movement,
which is the most reluctant parameter to be used in linguistic descrip-
tion due to its complexity (Boutet, 2018) is then simply considered a tra-
jectory of the hand, yet this manual trajectory—as a trace left behind—
cannot by itself contain all the meaning conveyed by the signer’s bodily
comportment.

2. TYPANNOT

2.1. Approach and Goals

The GestualScript team believes that meaning in SL is driven by the
signer's own activity and that this activity is fundamentally defined by
the many ways in which the body can be mobilized and experienced to
promote an ongoing dynamic of signification (Poizat, Salini, and Du-
rand, 2013; Theureau, 2004; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1993). Al-
though SL gesture refers to cultural and linguistic forms, part of its
meaning is fundamentally undetermined and arises through the non-
linear, open dynamics of activity. This means that gesture is personally
lived and understood at the level of a body that can freely transform,
modulate, and interact with those cultural and linguistic forms within the limits of what is possible in terms of movement and signification. TYPANNOT is a novel typographic system, which allows researchers to represent those transformations, modulations, and interactions at the articulatory level, at the point of skeletal joints. Such a musculoskeletal description makes it possible to investigate the semantic processes that arise from elementary gestural phenomenon and that would otherwise be difficult to distinguish. This approach involves a radical shift of perspective that has profound consequences in the way the different gestural components are perceived and represented.

The representation framework of TYPANNOT is based on the kine-
siologic model presented in section (§ 3.2). It distinguishes the different
articulatory domains that provide intrinsic representations for the five
parameters that structure SL. Four are static articulatory parameters
(HS, LOCINI, MOUTHACTION and EYESACTION<fnref n="5" />) and one is a dynamic
parameter (MOV) that describes the way an articulatory parameter is
being transformed. This representation framework must also meet the
practical aspects of transcription which implies processing information
in the form of viewable, transferable and searchable textual data. In or-
der to translate this representation framework into a viable typographic
system, four requirements have been identified, which guide the design
process: *genericity*, *readability*, *modularity* and *inscribability*.

2.2. Design principles

2.2.1. *Genericity*

The first requirement directly stems from the phonological transcrip-
tion approach using an articulatory model of the human body. For each
of the articulatory parameters, gesture is deconstructed into discrete el-
ements representing four layers of information (Fig. 6):

- Layer 1: the SL parameter that the transcription refers to (e.g., hand-shape);

- Layer 2: the different parts that compose the parameter (e.g., thumb);

- Layer 3: the different variables associated with each part (e.g., angle);

- Layer 4: the values assigned to those variables (e.g., open).

Each layer has a limited set of characteristics that defines it, creating in-
dividual bricks of information. Once defined, these characteristics form
the generic components of the TYPANNOT transcription system. Sym-
bolic graphic representations can be assigned to them and later encoded
into a font to perform like letters.

<footnote n="5">5. MOUTHACTION and EYESACTION are two parameters for describing the posture of the mouth and that of eyes and nose.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_159.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 6. This transcription of a mouth action has been set in generic form and colorized in order to distinguish the four layers of information. The SL parameter (layer 1) is written in black. The parts (layer 2) are written in orange. The variables (layer 3) are written in green. The values (layer 4) are written in blue.</figcaption></figure>

While there might be hundreds of thousands of possible configurations for a parameter (261 million possible configurations for the hand-shape alone), TYPANNOT requires only a few generic components to describe them all. The systematic organization of the information into four layers also gives the transcription a robust syntax that ensures it can be consistently produced, manipulated, and searched. Finally, through the principle of genericity, TYPANNOT allows annotators to perform queries and comparisons throughout different phonological levels, involving a combination of features or targeting a single one. This kind of deep querying of data is impossible to perform with other SL representation systems.

### 2.2.2. Readability

The TYPANNOT phonological approach aims to provide a discrete and low-level representation of gestures. From a typographical point of view, this is achieved at the cost of linearity. While the generic design principle involves methodically decomposing gestures into a suite of individualized pieces of information, it breaks down the only visuo-spatial guiding perspective that would allow users to read gestures in an intuitive and instantaneous way: the body space, in other words a unified representation of the body. For a language that is fundamentally visual in terms of perception, it is ironic that its representation needs to distill it to its lowest distinctive components, thus making its transcription unreadable. Although logographic systems like SW exist and show how readability in SL can be achieved through a spatialized representation
of the parametric components, none are able to retain a high level of discreteness while doing so.

This trade-off limits the main function of a transcription system: analysis. To be relevant to the principles of both genericity and readability, we believe that a SL transcription system needs to be able to display the same information in two formats: 1) a *generic* form that shows the distinct bricks of information organized through robust linear syntax that allows deep research into the gesture components; 2) a *composed* form that translates and integrates the different phonological components into a recognizable form: the image of the signed body. Progress in font encoding technologies (i.e., OpenType<fnref n="6" /> features) and typographic functionalities (i.e., contextual ligatures) allows us to design a system that gives users the ability to seamlessly display one form or the other while retaining data integrity. For each of the articulatory parameters, we define a specific graphic formula that translates the generic pieces of information into a unified and visually explicit “composed” glyph. For example, the initial location (LOCini) parameter refers to the structure of the upper limbs. This structure is made out of three parts (arm, forearm, hand) that are articulated according to various variables (flexion/extension, adduction/abduction, etc.) and their possible values (neutral, +1, +2, etc.). Displayed in the *generic* form (Fig. 7), the transcription looks like a string of symbols following a linear syntax. Displayed in the *composed* form (Fig. 8), the transcription looks like an articulated structure with joints (shoulders, elbows, wrists) and segments (forearms) forming an expressive figure with the head (triangle). The last segment, the hand, is shown on each side in order to appear bigger and more readable.

<figure><img src="image_160.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 7. LOCini displayed in the generic form (left side only)</figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="6">6. OpenType is a vectorial font format that allows encoding any character associated with Unicode, regardless of the platform (Mac, Windows, Android, etc.); OpenType fonts can have advanced typographic features that allow handling complex writing and typographic effects like ligatures.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_161.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 8. LOCini displayed in the composed form (left and right sides)</figcaption></figure>

While the logographic composed form has no analytic function, it reflects the ongoing ethical commitment of our team to provide accessible representation tools for both linguists and signers.

### 2.2.3. Modularity

Designing a typographic system that is both phonological and logo-graphical means that we have to maintain strict equivalence between the two forms. This equivalence can be achieved through using a modular design approach. Composed forms are basically projections of intrinsic articulatory characteristics following an allocentric perspective<fnref n="7" />. Graphic modules symbolizing the different parts (i.e., fingers and thumb) of an articulatory system (i.e., the hand) are transformed and assembled according to articulatory characteristics (i.e., form, angle, contact, etc.) inside a framework that systematically replicates the spatial organization of the body (Fig. 9).

<figure><img src="image_162.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 9. Three composed HS glyphs showing variation in their construction</figcaption></figure>

This modular design principle helps us solve the question of equivalence, and more importantly, allows us to automatize the glyph creation process. To this end, the articulatory approach is synonymous with massive combinatorial possibilities and we are now facing the problem of quantity. For example, the articulatory system of the hand alone can give rise to hundreds of thousands of configurations and thus requires the production of equal amounts of composed glyphs. Manually design-

<footnote n="7">7. In an allocentric perspective, the position of a body part is defined relative to the position of other body parts (e.g., the position of the hand depends on the position relative to the forearm, which depends on the position relative to the arm). In an egocentric perspective, the position of an element depends on the orientation of the viewer's body (e.g., the hand is in front, on the left and up).</footnote>
ing that many glyphs is, for many reasons, impractical<fnref n="8" />. Thanks to our modular framework and scriptable font design environment (i.e., Robofont<fnref n="9" />), we are able to code the module's integration process in order to generate all the composed forms.

### 2.2.4. Inscribability

The TYPANNOT project aims at providing a tool for the representation of SLs, but also explores the possible relations between the annotator or signer and a written form. While vocal writing systems use conventional graphic principles, SL writing or transcription systems have the unique opportunity to engage in a dialogue between writers and the constitutive dimensions of their own language: the human body. Through the intrinsic perspective of the articulatory models and a typographic system that combines phonographic and logographic dimensions, GestualScript believes that annotators can develop an intuitive bond with their transcription, not by describing "what SL looks like" but by recognizing "how SL happens" and describing it from the inside. Because it is not a familiar way to perceive gesture, this shift in perspective involves the creation of specific input interfaces that promote interactions that elucidate the articulatory and dynamic principles behind it (gesture). While designing those interactive input interfaces (see § 2.4) we are aiming at facilitating the process of incorporating and assigning the transcription systems (Poizat, Salini, and Durand, 2013).

## 2.3. Corpus and User-Driven Font Systems

OpenType fonts can contain up to 65,536 glyphs. With TYPANNOT, following the principle of modularity (§ 2.2.3), generating all morphologically possible combinations of a parameter's elements greatly exceeds the maximum capacity of font glyphs. For example, the automatic composition of TYPANNOT handshapes creates 291,600 glyphs.

To create TYPANNOT fonts, GestualScript has to decide what criteria should be used to reduce the number of possibilities by selecting the

<footnote n="8">8. One reason among others: at the improbable rate of one compounded glyph per second, it would take 261,000,000 seconds to encode all handshapes, which would require working more than 8 years, 24/7.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9. Robofont is software for typeface creation, which can automatically generate contextual ligatures from graphic modules and instructions on their layout. For the development of TYPANNOT, Frederik Berlaen, developer of Robofont (https://robofont.com), has kindly provided GestualScript with a license to use his software.</footnote>
most appropriate and relevant glyphs, keeping in mind language evolu-
tion. A bottom-up approach<fnref n="10" /> was chosen as the operating principle:

- First, a character set was created using the 237 handshapes identified by Eccarius and Brentari (2008) in their corpus made of confirmed configurations present in lexicons of 9 SLs (Hong Kong, Japanese, British, Swedish, Israeli, Danish, German, SwissGerman and American SL).

- A further development consisted in extending the character set to include a larger sample of signs, thanks to the addition of the configurations listed in the inventory of SW (Sutton, 1995), plus some variants sought for completeness.

- A third, future step will expand the character set in a participative way. By using TYPANNOT, linguists from every background will transcribe handshapes that haven't got yet a composed form. The program will automatically identify and collect those unknown forms in order to plan regular updates of the character set (§ 2.4.3).

This updating procedure will also help us identify and register new
handshapes in SLs that are less studied, expending their understanding.

## 2.4. Input Systems

Setting up a complete and comprehensible typographic system for SLs
was no easy task. The methods described above were essential in the
completion of TYPANNOT's goal to offer an efficient solution to en-
hance linguistic research on SL. Yet, the typographic system by itself is
not sufficient. In order to truly come into being, a custom tool that al-
lows researchers to use TYPANNOT to its fullest capacities was needed.
Therefore, we are currently shaping the TYPANNOT Keyboard into a
digital interface, which will offer several input devices to fit a wide spec-
trum of transcription approaches.

### 2.4.1. *Enhancing Knowledge Through Technology and Design Efficiency*

Creating a digital interface to make TYPANNOT fully accessible goes
far beyond the sole possibility of combining glyphs together in order to
inject them into office software (e.g., Word, PowerPoint, etc.) or multi-
modal transcription software (e.g., ELAN).

Such an interface has the responsibility of ensuring that users will
understand and use TYPANNOT in a coherent and consistent manner.
It is true that a well thought out user experience is always essential for

<footnote n="10">10. The selection is not based on given linguistic rules but on the occurrences found in various linguistic corpus.</footnote>
any given tool. But in this case, it goes beyond the necessity of user-
friendly software. TYPANNOT, as a new typographic system, needs to
be discovered, understood and used in a consistent way. It is an essential
part of the process to ensure that transcriptions using TYPANNOT can
be understood and used in cross referencing research.

That means that the structure and the interface design have to be
engineered to give users key pieces of information about TYPANNOT
itself: information on the structure of the typographic system, on the
value of each glyph, on how to combine them properly, and what the
results signify.

This task can be achieved in various ways. Some are very tangible,
like a quick overview of the software or a series of tutorial videos and
exercises to display the full potential of the interface. Others, equally
important, are less tangible, like the overall interface design and inter-
active feedback to help users understand what they can do and how to
do it (Fig. 10).

<figure><img src="image_163.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 10. Home page of TYPANNOT Keyboard: the interface design guides the user on what can be done and how it should be done</figcaption></figure>
### 2.4.2. *Opening Possibilities for Present and Future Research*

To be efficient, the design work of the TYPANNOT Keyboard has to take into account the TYPANNOT typographic system and different user profiles. Our opinion is that the latter is the most important aspect. Understanding the user's thought process and motivation is essential. And this alone is a substantial task. The TYPANNOT Keyboard is not intended to shape the direction of researchers' work. Our goal is to offer a flexible tool that enhances research capabilities, while retaining as much information as possible to broaden our understanding of SL. To this end, the TYPANNOT Keyboard and its interfaces are being developed to fit all research methodologies, all types of focus and specializations, and of course, all SLs and gestural actions.

From the beginning, the TYPANNOT Keyboard has been designed to be a virtual keyboard that can be used on top of any given software. Two different interfaces were developed, each offering its own transcription experience. These interfaces have three main features in common: an interactive 3-dimensional representation of the parameter, the corresponding glyph in TYPANNOT Font, and an input device.

The Parametric Interface (Fig. 11) has TYPANNOT's 4 layers of information (parameter, part, variable, value) as the input device. Glyphs are composed by selecting and adding values. It is a very simple way to compose glyphs that ensure a perfect comprehension of the typographic system.

The Gestural Interface (Fig. 12) uses motion capture devices (Leap Motion, Neuron Perception, Brekel Pro Face 2) to offer an effortless transcription process. This means that the annotator's own body is used to transcribe, directly reproducing the handshape, body position or facial action. This offers a very intuitive input system that truly connects with the nature of SL.

### 2.4.3. *Research Sourced Typographic Library*

Beyond a learning tool and an input device, the TYPANNOT Keyboard is also the answer to the technological limitations of OpenType fonts. In its initial version, the keyboard will be loaded with 990 glyphs corresponding to our fundamental set. But 990 is not exhaustive, and researchers will inevitably need more glyphs. When users compose a glyph needed for their own research and not yet included in the glyphic library, the TYPANNOT Keyboard will offer them the opportunity to request the addition of the new glyph. On a regular basis, the TYPANNOT library will be updated, including all requested glyphs. With this open sourced process, TYPANNOT will be the research-based font that includes all glyphs from all research around the globe.
<figure><img src="image_164.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 11. Parametric Interface of the TYPANNOT Keyboard for HS Coding</figcaption></figure>

## 3. The Kinesiological Approach

### 3.1. The Body at the Center of Linguistic Analysis

It is further important to recognize the role of movement in the expression of meaning in both SL and gesture, and therefore, to recognize the importance of movement in the development of our research. While phonological studies endeavor to faithfully represent the other manual and non-manual components in order to analyze them, any attempt to fix movement seems to go against the very essence of its ephemeral nature. The strong physical anchoring of movements generates a great complexity of representation; this creates analytical difficulties, which contribute to the marginalization of movement research relating to research about SLs and gestures in all types of communication. In turn, this results in a poor understanding of the nature and meaning of move-
<figure><img src="image_165.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 12. Gestural interface of the TYPANNOT Keyboard for HS coding</figcaption></figure>

ment, all of which ends up reinforcing the complexity of movement representation: it is a vicious circle<fnref n="11" />.

Besides being marginalized, the study of movement that does exist is almost exclusively focused on the activities of the hand, whose capacity to produce meaning is never in doubt. But while researchers are increasingly interested in the participation of the face and the trunk in the production of meaning, the arm and forearm remain confined to the role of simple connecting segments.

Breaking the ruts created by these common trends—i.e., the focus on the hand and the marginalization of the movement—requires a radical change of approach, which is precisely what Dominique Boutet<fnref n="12" /> proposes through the kinesiological approach developed in his own re-

<footnote n="11">11. Getting out of this loop is a very topical issue, practical but also theoretical. Indeed, the deepening of the analysis of movement is perceived as a possible response to the debate which animates research in SL on the distinction between co-verbal gestures and purely linguistic phenomena (Goldin-Meadow and Brentari, 2017).</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12. Dominique Boutet was coordinator of the GestualScript team from its beginnings in 2008 until 2020, when he succumbed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parallel to his commitment to the representation of SLs, he developed the kinesiological ap-</footnote>
search (Boutet, 2018). Taking into account the physical and physiological mechanisms governing the anatomical constraints of human movements, Boutet seeks both to restore the body capacities as a vehicle of meaning (see §3.2) and to show that it is possible to describe (and analyze) the movement faithfully and efficiently. For this, it is necessary to make innovative choices: include all of the upper limbs, change the frame of reference, and abandon Euclidean geometry.

### 3.1.1. *Considering the Upper Limb*

The hand is often considered as the only articulator carrying movement and, consequently, meaning (see Intro and §1). However, this is not an entity independent of the rest of the body. It is attached to the forearm, which is attached to the arm, itself linked to the trunk. The hand is therefore the most distal¹³ end of a chain of segments (SEG) comprising the forearm as well as the arm, and this concatenation necessarily generates a series of physiological constraints and limitations on the freedom of movement of each of these SEGS.

In the approach proposed by Boutet, movement is carried by all the SEGS of the upper limb, considered as an articulatory system. The movements and postures of each of these SEGS are described according to principles governed by biomechanics (Kapandji, 1997). Each SEG is associated with so-called degrees of freedom (DOF), which correspond to the rotation of a SEG around an axis located at the level of the proximal adjacent SEG. Thus, the hand will be described in relation to its position relative to the forearm; the latter will be linked to the arm, which in turn will be described in relation to the trunk. These axes mainly pass through the joints (wrist, elbow, shoulder), but they can also cross bones longitudinally (ulna + radius, humerus).

The upper limb is therefore an “infrastructure which underlies all the possible movements” (Boutet, 2010, p. 2) of the hand, and constitutes an articulated whole with inseparable parts, all having a precise role in the unfolding of the sign.

### 3.1.2. *Changing the Frame of Reference (FOR)*

An articulatory approach has a profound effect on how movement is inscribed in the representation space. Traditionally, the description of

proach to human gestures, which has greatly influenced the ongoing work carried out by the GestualScript team.

13. Distal and proximal are concepts indicating the position of a Seg relative to another Seg and to the body: a Seg is distal if it is located further from the body in relation to another Seg (the hand is distal in relation to the forearm which is distal to the arm); a Seg is proximal when closer to the body than another Seg (the arm is proximal to the forearm which is proximal to the hand).
movement is done in a space defined by Cartesian planes: horizontal, vertical and sagittal. The point where these planes intersect defines the frame of reference (FoR), which can be absolute, relative and intrinsic (Levinson, 1996; see Fig. 13). The first is centered on the surrounding space (the choice of a specific location on the space giving rise to several subtypes of relative FoRs); the second on the body of the signer (again, different subtypes are possible); the third is centered on an object and is defined on the basis of its inherent characteristics.

<figure><img src="image_166.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 13. Absolute, relative or intrinsic frame of reference (Levinson, 1996)</figcaption></figure>

The analysis of the SL representation systems (see §1) shows that they adopt FoRs which can be relative or absolute (never intrinsic), but also that within the same system, different FoRs can be adopted, sometimes on a case-by-case basis.<fnref n="14" /> In these events, these descriptive instabilities give rise to fragmentations of the description space even if looking just at the movement, thus generating the risk of inconsistencies in the analysis of signs (see above §1).

Extending the analysis to all the SEGS of the upper limb, the kinesiological approach risks being confronted with a multiplication of the difficulties of representation and analysis, unless it adopts a coherent system of registration in a single typology of FoR. The choice has been to abandon the projection of SEGS on planes in favor of a parameterization of the SEGS in their own respective space. This is allowed by the use of intrinsic FoRs. The description of each SEG is then centered on an object (i.e., the proximal SEG adjacent to the analyzed SEG) and is defined on the basis of the intrinsic characteristics of this same object (which are in fact equivalent to the DOF of the analyzed SEG). The various DOFs are identified by the name of their poles (or joint stops): abduction (ABD) on one side and adduction (ADD) on the other, flexion (FLX) and extension (EXT), pronation (Pro) and supination (SUP), internal rotation (RIN) and external rotation (REX).

<footnote n="14">14. In her thesis, Bianchini (2012) offers a detailed analysis of all the FoRs present in SW, showing that the FoR can vary within the same parameter.</footnote>
More concretely (see Fig. 14), the hand—whose FOR is defined in relation to the forearm—is affected by 2 DOF whose poles are FLX-EXT and ABD-ADD, both passing through the wrist joint; a 3rd DOF is present, PRO-SUP, which goes through the ulna and the radius (bone that can cross). This latter DOF could be considered to affect the forearm, but since the “result” of this movement is visible on the hand, it was decided to include it in the description of the hand. The forearm—more proximal than the hand and more distal than the arm—is affected by 2 DOF, i.e., FLX-EXT which passes through the elbow, and RIN-REX which is due to the possibility of the head of the humerus to rotate in the scapula. Here too, although RIN-REX is located on the upper arm, it is assigned to the forearm because its result is visible there. Finally, the arm—the most proximal of the SEGS and which is described in relation to the trunk—is affected by 2 DOF, i.e., FLX-EXT and ABD-ADD, both passing through the shoulder joint.

<figure><img src="image_167.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 14. Listing of the degrees of freedom (DOF) of the segments (SEG) of the upper limb</figcaption></figure>

The FOR used by the kinesiological approach is therefore unique, because in fact it is an intrinsic FOR, but it is combinatorial too, since it takes into account the fact that in an articulatory system each SEG depends on its proximal SEG. This innovative choice has also the advantage of being ready for the envisaged technological requirements: motion capture systems (MoCap) are gaining in importance in gestural
studies and some of these technologies are based on intrinsic FORs, but the classical representation systems used to analyze them are still based on relative or absolute FORs, thus requiring a conversion. The kinesiological approach allows direct access to data, minimizing biases related to said FOR conversion, thus facilitating not only the understanding of the movement but also its representation: this should make it possible to break the vicious circle discussed in § 3.2.

The change of FOR makes it possible to focus on the possibilities and limits of the movements specific to each of the SEGS, but it also generates other modifications: bypassing Cartesian planes for the description of SEGS requires finding a geometry that can take into account elements which no longer fit into these plans.

### 3.1.3. *The Transition to a Non-Euclidean Geometry*

In 1934, Ernest A. Codman affirms that if the arm is completely raised, it is both in complete REX and complete RIN (Codman, 1934). Neither its author nor the specialists in movement and physiology who looked into it (Pearl et al., 1992) succeeded in explaining this fact. It is ultimately the abandonment of Euclidean geometry in favor of a non-Euclidean geometry which allows understanding the existence of diadocal movements<fnref n="15" /> (MacConaill, 1953) and therefore resolving this alleged paradox.

Euclidean geometry draws its forms on planes and is based on 5 postulates, the last of which states (simplifying) that “given a straight-line *d* and a point *P* located outside it, there is one and only one straight line *d*′ passing through *P* and parallel to *d* (Fig. 15). The non-Euclidean geometry proposed by Gauss, a.k.a. spherical geometry, rejects this postulate, asserting that “there exists an infinity of lines passing through *P* which are parallel to *d* (Fig. 16). This is possible if, and only if, we abandon the representation on the plane in favor of a representation on the sphere. A line (spherical) will be a circle drawn at the “equator” of a sphere; a point will be a pole where several spherical lines intersect. The consequence is such that—unlike the principles stated by Euclidean geometry—in spherical geometry, the curve (or spherical line) is a very simple plot and the plane straight line is a complex figure.

Coming back to the description of the body, the most proximal end of a SEG (e.g., the elbow for the forearm) constitutes the center of a (portion of) sphere; the movement of the different DOFs draw at the most distal end of the SEG (e.g., the wrist for the forearm) “straight” spherical

<footnote n="15">15. The Codman's Paradox is the result of a "diadocal movement," i.e., an involuntary movement which, on a SEG with 3 DOF (like the hand or the arm, if considering also the hidden DOF carried by the humerus), affects a DOF when the other two moves consecutively.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_168.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 15. The postulates of Euclidean geometry</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_169.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 16. In spherical geometry, Euclid's 5th postulate is not respected</figcaption></figure>

lines which intersect at the poles of this sphere. The use of the spherical geometry, associated with the multiple intrinsic FORS, thus allows to describe in a simple way what is anatomically simple—that is to say the production of curves—and in a complex way what is complex for the body, i.e., the straight lines (Fig. 17). This therefore contributes to the creation of a faithful and efficient description of the movement.

## 3.2. The Body as a Generator of Meaning

In the classical approach to SL analysis, the hand is seen as the articulator which, replacing the mouth, conveys meaning. The kinesiological approach, with its consideration of the entire upper limb in a non-
<figure><img src="image_170.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 17. Segment(s) performing a simple (1 DOF) or complex (several DOFs) anatomical gesture</figcaption></figure>

Euclidean geometry and with intrinsic and multiple FO Rs, questions the validity of this idea.

For example, the co-verbal gesture “no” can be done, at least in France, by standing with the arm alongside the body, the forearm slightly bent, and the hand extended; it is then possible to perform repeated movements of ABD and ADD of the hand (a “little no”). But to support the disagreement, it will then not only be the hand that will be in motion, but also the forearm, and why not, the arm (a “big no”). Visually, these two realizations are very different, but nobody doubts that they convey the same meaning “no”: how is that possible?

To answer this question, the kinesiological approach proposes to
search for the structural invariants of the articulatory dynamics which
underlie the creation of signs and which are hidden by purely visual
differences. Once again, innovative choices and new concepts become
necessary: a) proposing a new notion of movement and temporality; b)
restructuring the classic parameters of SL analysis.

3.2.1. *Movements and Temporality*

The search for invariants begins with understanding the different ty-
pologies of movement. Boutet suggests distinguishing proper move-
ment from displacements and transfers. It is a question of proper move-
ment when a SEG initiates movement, that is, at least one of its DOFs
performs a rotation. If this SEG has SEGS more distal than itself, these—
driven by the proper movement—displace in space, without even their
DOF moving. Finally, in special cases, there may be an inertial transfer
of movement: the rotation of a DOF then engages the variation of a DOF
on a different SEG.
If a movement can propagate between different SEGS, then it is possible to study its flow (Boutet, 2018), that is to say the order in which the different SEGS are set in motion. If a movement begins on the hand and then continues on the forearm, this is a distal-proximal flow; if the reverse is true, then it is a proximal-distal flow; the flow can also be “neu-ral” if all the concerned SEGS move at the same time, or even “absent”.

To come back to the “big no” and “small no,” they are identified as manifestations of the same sign because they correspond to the same pattern: the hand initiates a repeated movement on the DOF ABD-ADD, which is propagated by following a distal-proximal flow. This reality, however, remains hidden under the superficial manifestation of these two demonstrations. A restructuring of the classic manual parameters (see Intro) is therefore necessary.

### 3.2.2. Restructuring of Location and Orientation

Boutet (ibid.) argues that the search for invariants can be facilitated by restructuring the classic parameters of orientation, location and move-ment, proposing to replace them by parameters whose names may seem similar, but whose scope will be radically different: the initial location (LOCINI) and the movement (MOV).

The LOCINI makes it possible to fix the position of all the SEGS before the deployment of the sign. Therefore, it brings together the notions of orientation and location, but by extending them to the whole of the upper limb. Concretely, the LOCINI is described through the angles of rotation (in an intrinsic FOR) of all the DOFs of the SEGS (only 7 in total).

The kinesiological approach then makes the hypothesis (Chevrefils, forthcoming) that once the body is installed in a posture, the result-ing Mov is simple: the body's tendency to decrease the DOFs to be controlled pushes the SEGS to coordinate (Survey, 1990) and to prefer a distal-proximal flow,<fnref n="16" /> which leads to economy and predictability of movements. The results of a first study involving a few minutes of cor-pus in three SLs (English, French and Italian) seem promising (Danet et al., 2017). A deepening of this hypothesis, through an accurate analysis of the kinematic data from a MoCap system, is underway.

Therefore, the subdivision between LOCINI and MOV also con-tributes to understanding the difference between the small and the big

<footnote n="16">16. Despite the existence of a decreasing inertial slope from the arm to the hand (Dumas, Chèze, and Verriest, 2007) favoring a proximal-distal flow, the communica-tional aim of movement in SL would reverse this trend: the flow of movement would then be predominantly distal-proximal (Chevrefils, forthcoming). The preliminary study of a corpus of three SLs seems to confirm this trend (Danet et al., 2017), the causes of which are still under investigation.</footnote>
"no": the two are identified as distinct realizations of the same sign because their Mov is the same, despite a difference in the LOCINI and in the Mov amplitude. A difference in the SEG initiating the gesture, in the DoF concerned or in the flow would not have allowed these signs to be identified as "no". The kinesiological approach thus renders to the whole body (and no longer just to the hand) its function of generator of meaning.

### 3.3. From Theory to Practice: From Movement to TYPANNOT

Although offering a reliable and economical description of the movement, the kinesiological approach requires the handling of many concepts. This novelty could generate the impression that this description system can only be used after following a specific theoretical training, in particular concerning the use of intrinsic For which is “experienced” by any speaker, but which is not “recognized” and “perceived” by most of them.

The work of the GestualScript team addresses this point. Its goal is to make all these notions accessible and functional through the creation of TYPANNOT, a transcription system based on typographic principles. TYPANNOT is not only a graphic formalization of a theory, it is the instrument for appropriating the theory itself, drawing its bases from the kinesiological model and its descriptive efficiency, it will allows the constitution of a readable, writable, and searchable corpus (of SL or of co-verbal gestures) readable, scriptable and searchable according to the desired level of granularity.

The passage from the complexity of a theoretical approach to the intuitiveness of a “turnkey” typographic system requires answering several preliminary questions, including a non-exhaustive list of which is: how can such complex phonological descriptions be readable and scriptable? how to increase the descriptive precision of the system without increasing the transcription time, or even reducing it? how to make the transcriptor conscious of their own body so that the notion of intrinsic For is understandable?

The answers to these questions go through the definition of different layers of information and construction principles, set out above.

## Discussion

TYPANNOT is a typographic writing system intended for linguists needing to study and transcribe SLs. It follows a musculoskeletal articulatory approach that changes the conventional perspective from which
gestures are observed. This perspective allows researchers to investi-
gate how corporal activity fully determines the construction, modula-
tion, and transformation of meaning of the signs in SLs.

Further, the phonological articulatory approach of TYPANNOT, in
which the joints of the skeleton are represented in order to distinguish
the abstract phonetic units that correspond to meaning in SLs and move-
ment, it possible to transcribe gestures using the same corporal parame-
ters. This way, TYPANNOT is also a tool for investigating other forms
of corporal expression, such as co-verbal gesturality, which refer to ges-
tures made while talking.

Also, because our writing system describes the morphological com-
ponents of SLs at the articulatory level, TYPANNOT indexes SL using
elementary characters. This makes it possible to refer to SL signs us-
ing simple morphological and gestural features rather than translating
them into a vocal language, as is systematically the case with online SL
dictionaries.

Another aspect of the TYPANNOT system is its ability to transcribe
the dynamics of the articulatory system. Such transcription possibilities
can be coupled with motion capture technologies to explore new ways
of inputting, recognizing, and reproducing SL signs. When a stream of
recorded gestures can be directly recognized to automatically generate
a transcription (input), this transcription can also generate the 3D ani-
mation of a signing avatar (output).

Finally, although not the main goal of this project, TYPANNOT is
fitting to the contribution of the development of a writing system for SLs
by giving signers a new form of expression that is based on the human
body itself, the very center and origin of all SL expression.

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<figure><img src="image_171.png" /></figure>
# How to Improve Metalinguistic Awareness by Writing a Language Without Writing: Sign Languages and Signwriting

Claudia S. Bianchini

*Abstract.* Multilingualism permits to compare elements of each known language, favoring the development of metalinguistic awareness which helps to correlate the functioning of own reference languages (L1, L2, etc.). To all intents and purposes, signing deaf are bilingual people with sign language (SL) as L1 and an own vocal language (VL) as L2. Since deafness affects only the auditory canal, it should be reasonable to expect that deaf (signing or not) have the same competence in VL writing than hearing people; however, Gillot (1998) has demonstrated that 80% of French deaf adults have a scarce level of literacy. On the other hand, Garcia et al. (2007) have proved that deaf signers have a better relationship with writing than deaf not knowing SL, while Perini (2013) has evinced how SL knowledge helps the deaf to understand the functions of writing, a fundamental activity for writing proficiency. To improve the deaf's writing it would therefore be even more useful to propose exercises comparing the written forms of SL and of VL. However, this is not simple, as SLs are historically pure "oral" languages, without an established writing system. That notwithstanding, experiments using Sutton's (1995) SignWriting, a graphic representation system of SL, have shown how the knowledge of a SL writing system allows, in very natural ways, the emergence of metalinguistic reflections which can then be reinvested to better understand the structure and functioning of the own reference VL.

## 1. Introduction

Sign Languages (SL) are visual-gestural languages used by deaf¹ and hearing people who recognize themselves as members of the deaf community of their respective countries: in France, LSF is used; in the USA,

Claudia S. Bianchini

<figure><img src="image_172.png" /></figure>

0000-0002-4783-1202

UFR Lettres & Langues, Bâtiment A3, 1 rue Raymond Cantel, TSA 11102, 86073 Poitiers Cedex 9, France

claudia.savina.bianchini@univ-poitiers.fr

1. The use of the word “deaf,” instead of the more politically-correct “hard of hearing,” is a deliberate choice of the author, which reflects the willingness of the signing deaf to be recognized as member of a linguistic community and not as people affected by a pathology.

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*

Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 5.

Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 1039–1065. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-bian

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-7-8, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-9-2
ASL; in Italy, LIS; in Germany, DGS; in England, BSL (which has nothing to do with ASL although English is also spoken in the USA!); and so on<fnref n="2" />, for a total of about 140 SLs worldwide<fnref n="3" />. SLs are not simple gestural transpositions of local vocal languages (VL), but they are real languages with their own syntax and lexicon, which allow to talk about any topic.

SLs have several characteristics that distinguish them from VLs, all due to the visual-gestural channel, which is the preferred one for the deaf (for further information: Cuxac, 2000; Cuxac and Antinoro Pizzuto, 2010; Sallandre, 2014). First of all, the meaning in SL is transmitted by the simultaneous use of multiple articulators (hands, arms, torso, head, mouth, eyes, etc.), all equally important, thus making the SL *multilinear* languages (in opposition to the *monolinearity* of the VLs, which have the mouth as sole articulator). These articulators move in the 4 dimensions of space-time, allowing SL to exploit all of them to create and syntactically organize the meanings: they are therefore *spatial* languages. This spatiality favors the use of *iconicity* for the creation of meaning, that is, the description of a selection of visual characteristics to describe entities or actions<fnref n="4" />. Iconicity influences not only the lexicon but the whole SL syntactic structure.

Although the whole SL lexicon has an iconic component, the value to be attributed to iconicity varies according to the type of syntactic structure used. Cuxac and Antinoro Pizzuto (2010) distinguish two kinds of structures, the Lexematic Units (LU) and the Transfer Units (TU), which differ from the signer's intention to just say (which in VL would be equivalent to saying "yesterday I ate a lot of pizza") or to say something while in the meantime showing it (which in VL would be equivalent to saying "yesterday I ate a piece of pizza this big" accompanying this sentence with a gesture to show the size of the pizza slice). In "saying without showing" (a.k.a. "visée non-illustrative"), the signer looks the interlocutor straight in the eyes and, using almost exclusively the hands, communicates the information using lexicalized units whose canonical form could be found in a SL dictionary. In "saying and showing" (a.k.a. "visée illustrative"), on the other hand, the signer looks at the space where the signs develop and, in so doing, activates both the

<footnote n="2">2. While these examples seem to imply that the mapping of countries into languages is one-to-one, this is not always the case: a country can have several SLs or one SL can be used in several countries, e.g., Swiss deaf utilize LIS (also used in Italy), LSF (also used in France) or DSGS (used only in German-speaking cantons).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/sign-language</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4. However, it is necessary to note that iconicity does not constitute an obstacle to the ability of SLs to express abstract concepts; in these cases, in fact, a visual metaphor corresponding to the abstract concept will be rendered iconically: for example, to indicate the soul, the sign describes a subtle and light entity which goes towards the sky or, to indicate learning, the sign describes the act of taking entities and letting them enter in the head.</footnote>
space and the signs themselves; furthermore, investing emself with the
whole body (facial expression, head and torso movements, etc.) al-
lows the interlocutor to see how a situation unfolded (that is called a
"situation transfer"), how e acted and what a person looked like ("per-
sonal transfer"), or what physical characteristics typify an object or an
entity ("transfer of size and shape"). The signs made with illustrative
intention have long been considered pantomimic (Kendon, 1980), and
for this reason these signs have struggled to be accepted as fully lin-
guistic structures. However, Cuxac (2000) has demonstrated that these
signs are linguistic elements with a structure and economy, and Sallan-
dre (2003) has shown how, in some narrative forms, they can make up
about 90% of what is signed.

Although the SLs origin is often associated with the moment of their
institutionalization (i.e., the beginning of their use in schools for the
deaf<fnref n="5" />), there are traces of their existence already in the writings of the
philosophers of Greek antiquity, like Plato or Aristotle. Thus, SLs are
in fact historical-natural languages with peculiar characteristics, used
by specific communities, and which allow to express any concept which
can be formulated in any other language. However, the gestural nature
of these languages has often led institutions to ostracize them: in 1880,
for example, the concluding declarations of the Congress of Milan led,
throughout Europe, to a ban on SL use to educate deaf children; this
prohibition lasted almost 100 years, devaluating SLs both in the hear-
ing institutions and in the deaf community itself (Encrevé, 2012). Only
starting from the '60s in the USA and then the '80s in Europe, with the
movements of "deaf awakening," SLs were recognized as languages in all
respects, starting a path of revaluation that continues (sometimes with
difficulty) even today.

## 2. Deafness, Literacy and Sign Language

Premise: in this section reference is made to France, where SL enjoys a relatively advanced linguistic recognition, especially since the promulgation of the Accessibility Law of 2005 which recognized the LSF as a language in all respects and which confirmed the right of deaf children's parents to choose how to educate their children. In Europe there are countries with even more advanced inclusive legislation, for example Austria, Finland and Hungary, which offer their SLs recognition in the

<footnote n="5">5. In France, for example, institutionalization took place between 1760 (the year of the foundation by the Abbé de l'Épée of the first school for the deaf in Paris) and 1791 (the year of the transformation of this school into the "Institut National des Jeunes Sourds" [INJS]); this school, still active, is known today as Institut Saint-Jacques or INJS-Paris.</footnote>
Constitution; unfortunately, however, there are also countries with serious delays, such as Italy, where the simple recognition of the linguistic status of the LIS still seems far away and where the right to a bilingual education is denied (although not forbidden, little or nothing is done to favor it). Although countries offer their deaf children different educational possibilities, the following considerations can be applied to all European countries (and beyond).

Today, profound deafness affects about 200,000 people in France and LSF is practiced (more or less well) by about 80,000 deaf persons (not all profoundly deaf) (Gillot, 1998). In most cases, deaf children are born into hearing families, where they are the first and only deaf (Cuxac and Antinoro Pizzuto, 2010); nevertheless, the child's parents will have to choose from birth which type of communication to favor. Analyses of children's language development show that if a deaf child is exposed to SL early (either because parents are deaf or because they decide to learn SL), their understanding and production (in SL, not in VL!) at age two are comparable to those of a hearing child of the same age (in VL, not in SL!) (Rinaldi et al., 2014); if, on the other hand, oral communication is chosen, the child will be able to discriminate the form of different words, but will show a delay in both the development of comprehension and of oral production (De Santis, 2010), due to the difficulty of learning an oral language without being able to hear it. However, parents take the oral route more frequently, since at the time of diagnosis they know little or nothing about SL, and teaching the child to lip-read<fnref n="6" /> and talk seems, alas, the simplest way to promote their social integration and educational success.

Whatever the language chosen in the family, right from enrollment in kindergarten, French law (Assemblée Nationale and Sénat, 2005) allows parents to choose for their children an education with or without LSF<fnref n="7" />: the first case is called bilingual education, in where the “oral” language is the LSF and the “written” language is French, the use of spoken French being possible but not mandatory; the second case is called oral educa-

<footnote n="6">6. Lip-reading requires long training and continuous practice: it is a question of discriminating what is said from the form of the mouth, but not all sounds results from different mouth shapes. The deaf must not only be at a short distance and perfectly in front of the speaker, but must also exploit clues from the facial expression, gestures and general context. This activity is therefore considered by the deaf as very tiring (DavSign, 2018).</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7. This subdivision is here simplified to the extreme: there are many variations of the “bilingual method,” e.g., methods which more or less integrate oral French, which have recourse to professors who teach in LSF or which use LSF interpreters who translate what the professor says in French; in the same way, the “oral method” encompasses many different educational systems, some of which prohibit any use of gestures while others integrate gestural forms (in different phases and with different values) and even involve sometimes the use of “true” signs (for a more complete view, refer to the thesis of Leroy [2010]).</footnote>
tion, in which French is used both for the written and the oral part (thru lip reading). However, this freedom of choice clashes with the scarcity of schools and institutions that guarantee the bilingual education. ANPES estimates that parents have chosen a bilingual education in 3,570 cases (out of 10,600 deaf children in school age), but that only 10% actually have access to a true bilingual class; for the remaining 90%, the way in which LSF is integrated into the school is not known (it could be just a purely oral education, associated with some course of LSF initiation).

Whatever the type of education chosen, the deaf child grows up in a world where VL is the primary environmental language and its written (and often oral) form is taught throughout school. Still, the assumptions that a deaf child has the same literacy skills of a hearing child of the same age, and that the number of illiterate adults among the deaf is in line with that of the hearing people are both incorrect. In fact, the rapport Gillot (1998)<fnref n="8" /> indicates that 80% of deaf adults are unlettered, i.e., they have learned to read and write (they should be then literate) but do not have the necessary skills to understand and/or produce not even short texts. Most deaf people declare that they live negatively any situation in which writing is necessary, developing strategies aimed at avoiding recourse to writing and reading (Garcia et al., 2007).

How to explain this data? Set aside the theories of the early '900 concerning a deaf's phantomatic cognitive defect (for more details see Perini, 2013), the responsibility was then attributed to the use of LSF: however, since it was prohibited until the 1980s and is used by less than 40% of the deaf, it is unlikely that it could be responsible for such a debacle. Studying other possible explanations, Perini (ibid.) showed that the development of reading-writing skills is not so much linked to learning *how* to read and write (deciphering of letters, acquisition of phonological awareness) but to understanding *what* is written and read (knowledge of the world) and *why* (functions of writing). This link is also highlighted for hearing children, and in fact the discovery of both the world and the functions of reading and writing are part of the normal school curriculum since kindergarten ("Ministère de l'Éducation Nationale" 2015). For Perini, the development of reading and writing skills depends on the early constitution of a "favorable linguistic environment," in which the child's understanding is stimulated, rather than his linguistic production: it is therefore difficult to attribute the low level of literacy to LSF, especially since the number of deaf signers who claim to be at ease

<footnote n="8">8. It has been 30 years since this report, but deafness experts continue to cite its data because: 1) no similar study has been carried since then; 2) the situation, albeit improved thanks to the Accessibility Law of 2005 (Assemblée Nationale and Sénat, 2005), has not radically changed and, even if the number of deaf illiterates may have dropped, it is still about 10 times higher than that of the hearing people (a level estimated at 7% of illiterates in France in 2011 (ANLCI)).</footnote>
in writing is greater than that of deaf oralists (Garcia et al., 2007) and since in profound deaf children the knowledge of a SL smoothes acquiring writing skills (Niederberger, 2005).

With the same understanding of the world, however, the level of literacy of the deaf remains lower than that of their hearing peers (Dubuisson and Daigle, 1998). This statement is supported by the low number of profoundly deaf people who access the University, only 300 in 2016 (Micouleau, 2018). Another explanation can therefore be in the natural under-exposure of the deaf to the dominant VL, i.e., the language normally used to read and write: whether they have been educated with SL or without, the deaf cannot take advantage of the linguistic bath that every hearing child is exposed to (parents, relatives, television, passers-by, all speak in front of them even when they are not talking to them). Although SL allows deaf signers to access content, the lower linguistic exposure to VL makes them less able to express themselves in VL; and, for the deaf oralists, the greater exposure to VL does not compensate for the problems related to the difficulty of lip-reading, a tough and tiring exercise that “occupies” the child in an effort of deciphering rather than understanding and which works only in mutual direct communication. Considering this lower exposure, some people (e.g., the researchers of the LSQ group at UQÀM<fnref n="9" />) have proposed to compare the deaf’s difficulties in reading-writing not so much with that of their hearing peers, but with that of foreigners who are learning to read and write French.

### 3. Role of Comparison Between Different Languages in Metalinguistic Development

In the '90s, Dabène and Ingelmann (1996) conducted an experiment involving two classes (about 50 children age 9–11 years) of an elementary school in Grenoble (France). These classes were characterized by a large presence of bilingual foreign children (speaking, in addition to French, Italian, Turkish, Arabic or Spanish); moreover, in these classes was active the “awareness of language” (Hawkins, 1987), a teaching methodology of Anglo-Saxon inspiration which, in the description of the authors, corresponds to:

> It is a question of arousing, in the child, from observations and manipulations carried out on a supporting language (L1)—French or a language of origin, but even on a set of languages as varied as possible—the awareness of what is the language universe in its variety, its functioning and its acquisition. We hypothesize that this type of work is likely to promote both the

<footnote n="9">9. Université du Québec à Montréal, Groupe de Recherche sur la LSQ et le Bilinguisme Sourd, https://lsq.uqam.ca/.</footnote>
reasoned mastery of L1 and the learning of foreign languages, while integrat-
ing the contribution of the original languages of the alloglot children, which
are thus legitimized." (Dabène and Ingelmann, 1996, p. 3, translated from
French by the author)

For example, working on tenses, children were asked what they thought
of a phrase like “tomorrow I disguise myself” and, letting them reflect in
group, they were led not only to give the correct version “tomorrow I will
disguise myself” but also to find how to justify to comrades why this form
was correct, using examples based both on French and their native lan-
guage. In another exercise, bilingual children were asked to explain to
other children the difference between the morphology of the verbal sys-
tem of their native language and that of French (of course, without using
the word morphology, too complex for children of that age).

The authors stress the advantages of such an approach not only for
bilingual but for monolingual children too: in fact, parallel to the im-
provement of French, bilingual children developed a reflection on the
language of origin which, not being the language of schooling, was used
without explicitly knowing its rules, while monolingual children discov-
ered new linguistic dimensions hitherto unknown; furthermore, the use
of their language in the classroom allowed allophone students to perceive
their linguistic diversity as a richness for the whole class and not as an ob-
stacle to their integration, effectively enhancing their language of origin.

Numerous studies on bilingualism (for a critical synthesis, see Besse,
Marec-Breton, and Demont, 2010) have shown how knowing more than
one language allows children to develop a strong metalinguistic aware-
ness, that is “a subdomain of metacognition which concerns language
and its use, in other words comprising: (1) reflections on language and
its use; (2) the abilities to control and plan own linguistic processes”
(Gombert, 1990, p. 27; translated from French by the author); it should
be emphasized that developing a metalinguistic awareness does not nec-
essarily mean knowing the specialized vocabulary necessary to express
it (Dabène and Ingelmann, 1996).

In fact, deaf signer children are bilingual children, so why not try to
use their knowledge of SL to improve their relationship with VL?

4. Metalinguistic Awareness and Writing

The development of metalinguistic awareness is strongly linked with
writing: apart from perhaps that made by Pānini<fnref n="10" />, there is no system-
atic study of the organization of a language that has been done without

<footnote n="10">10. The Indian Pānini was the author of the first grammar of Classical Sanskrit, consisting of about 4,000 rules. The dating of his work is very controversial (Filliozat, 2020): on one hand, it describes the classical Sanskrit, which places it around the 7th</footnote>
a system for writing that language; therefore, the linguist approaching a
new language wonders, right from the start, about how to represent and
transcribe it, in order to study it. According to Goody (1977), one of the
major innovations resulting by the invention of writing is precisely that
of allowing to reflect on language using the language itself.

Now, as illustrated in § 2, bilingual education for deaf children means
written French and LSF replacing spoken French: the written form of
LSF is not taken into consideration at all, although it would seem a good
idea to use this knowledge to explain to children why French works in
a certain way, or to show how the functions of writing are the same for
SL and VL.

The reason for the total exclusion of written SL from school teaching
is simple: there is no writing for SL! In fact, like most of the world's
languages, none of the 140 SLs currently registered¹¹ has ever developed
a writing system accepted and adopted by the deaf community, so it is
not possible to use any SL writing system within a bilingual education.
Since SL institutionalization, however, there have been several attempts
to represent SL, some aimed mainly at linguistic research and others
more focused at use in education.

5. Historical Attempts at SL Writing

Attempts to represent SL can be divided into three broad categories
(Bonnal-Vergès, 2008a), of which only the last one will be the scope of
this paragraph: the design of the sign shape (Fig. 1a); the description in
words of the sign shape (Fig. 1b) or of the image to which the sign seems
to refer (Fig. 1c); the representation, through specially designed charac-
ters, of the parameters that make up the signs, which can be arranged lin-
early (Fig. 1d) or in a two-dimensional space (Fig. 1e). Drawings were, for
a long time, the only way to try to represent SL because, as well summa-
rized by Br. Louis, monk and educator of the deaf,

century BC; but on the other hand, the extent of his work is such as to seem impossible
to be done without having recourse to writing, which appeared in the region of India
where he lived only in the 3rd century BC. Supporters of older dating hypothesize
that Pānini was able to compose his grammar without recourse to writing because he
used the memory of his many disciples to “record” the rules he identified.

11. Ethnologue¹², an inventory of world languages, states that about half of the cur-
rently spoken languages have never developed a form of writing; of the other half, it
is not possible to determine how many actually have a writing system that is still nor-
mally used and how many remain just purely oral, despite the existence of a graphic
form. Given that Ethnologue's statistics are based only on the languages currently
spoken, it can be said that, since humans developed the language, almost all the lan-
guages that have existed on earth have been solely oral.

12. https://www.ethnologue.com/enterprise-faq/how-many-languages-world-are-unwritten-0
<figure><img src="image_173.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. The sign [HOUSE] represented: (a) using a drawing (from Hanke, 2004); (b) describing its shape; (c) describing the picture to which the sign relates; (d) by a linear string of characters (HamNoSys); (e) by characters placed non-linearly (SignWriting)</figcaption></figure>

I would rather jump over the cathedral of Nantes mounted on a mule than Mr. Bouchet and company would create a universal signs dictionary without including drawings. (Bonnal-Vergès, 2008b, p. 140; translated from French by the author)

The first example of this type of representation is due to the French Auguste Bébian (1825), educator of deaf children, who had the intuition to describe SL through three series of symbols: one for the visible parts of the body; the second for the possible movements of these organs; the third for the facial expressions that accompany signs. In this way, the author hoped that "the deaf mute could express his thought on paper, as and more clearly than by gesture and without needing to translate it linearly into any language" (quoted by Renard, 2004; translated from French by the author).

This is therefore a first attempt to give deaf a way to write their language, without having to resort to written VL. However, this system was never adopted: at the time a movement against SL use in education was emerging in France, which led to Bébian's sacking and, 60 years later, to the prohibition of sign utilization which was sanctioned by the Congress of Milan in 1880.

Between 1880 and 1960, even in countries not directly affected by the Congress of Milan, such as the USA, SL underwent a process of devaluation, due to rapid medical-scientific progress which seemed ready to solve the problem of deafness at its root. However, in 1960, at Gallaudet University<fnref n="13" />, linguist William Stokoe (Stokoe, 1960; Stokoe, Casterline,

<footnote n="13">13. Gallaudet University, founded in 1863, is the first and only University for the deaf in the world: the numerous courses offered, all in the field of Human Sciences and often in connection with deafness and SL, are provided exclusively in ASL. Contrary to Europe, the impact on the USA of the Congress of Milan was marginal, thus</footnote>
and Croneberg, 1965) launched the revaluation process of ASL through the first modern study aimed at understanding the linguistic nature of SL (through the demonstration of their double articulation) and at creating an ASL dictionary. Stokoe considered that the minimum distinctive unit endowed with meaning (called kinema and not morpheme) corresponded to the whole sign, while the minimum distinctive unit without meaning (*cherema* and not phoneme) was to be identified in 4 “manual parameters”: configuration (shape of the hand); orientation (direction of the carpus and metacarpus, this parameter was added only in 1965); place (area of the body in which the hand is located); and movement (action performed by the hand). He proposed to associate a character to each identified cherema and to organize his dictionary no longer on the alphabetical order of the English translation of the signs, but on the shape of the signs. To do this, it was necessary to be able to transcribe the signs with a common typewriter of the time: he therefore chose to use normal letters, numbers and mathematical symbols as characters, and to arrange them linearly according to a rigid syntax that would have allowed to put in “cheremic order” the signs in the dictionary. In this way, the Stokoe Notation (SN; Fig. 2a) was born, considered the first modern system for SL transcription.

SN could only encode ASL, since not only the names identified were those in use in the USA but the names chosen were in direct connection with the ASL: for this reason, numerous linguists (e.g., Bergman and Björkstrand, 2015; Kyle and Woll, 1985; Radutzky, 1992; Thoutenhoofd, 2003), proposed adaptations of SN but maintaining both the 4-parameter structure and the rigid linear formula; among these adaptations, HamNoSys stands out (Prillwitz, Leven, Zienert, and Hanke, 1989; Fig. 2b). Compared to SN, HamNoSys allows encoding a greater number of cheremas, through the use of basic symbols to which modifiers are added; it also allows representing some facial expressions; furthermore, the character design is iconically motivated, so that the system is exportable to other SLs and is easier to manipulate; finally, particular attention was paid to the computer integration of the system, so as to facilitate its use in the scientific field.

SN and its subsequent adaptations were tools designed by linguists for the sole purpose of research. On the contrary, SignFont (Newkirk, 1989; Fig. 3a), in addition to aspiring to be able to transcribe the SL, explicitly tries to establish itself as a writing system for SLs (Camurri and Volpe, 2003). However, the system has very few differences compared to HamNoSys: iconic characters, use of modifiers, the possibility of encoding some facial expressions, presentation in the form of a

<footnote>making the existence of such a structure possible, despite the general process of SL devaluation. In the 1980s, a visit by a delegation of the French deaf to the Gallaudet University was among the triggers of the “ReveilSourd” movement in France.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_174.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 2. The sign [HOUSE] transcribed with: (a) the Stokoe Notation; (b) HamNoSys</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_175.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 3. The sign [HOUSE] transcribed with: (a) SignFont; (b) the ASLphabet</figcaption></figure>

rigid formula; the only difference is in the lower number of characters, 90 instead of HamNoSys's 200. This number was then further reduced for ASLphabet (Supalla, McKee, and Cripps, 2014; Fig. 3b), a version of SignFont developed for children to find signs in an ASL dictionary.

In addition to linguists, educators too tried to develop systems for SL writing. Paul Jouison (1949–1991), an educator specialized in deafness, was among the first (Jouison, 1995), to try to teach LSF to parents of deaf children. During his first *cours de gestes* he decided to teach the LSF lexicon and, separately, mime, which he thought was preparatory to the acquisition of transfer units (TU, whose linguistic nature was still denied). However, he soon realized that his method was not working and decided to better understand the nature of TUs, trying to transform his epilinguistic knowledge of LSF into metalinguistic proficiency useful for transmitting LSF to other people. He therefore decided to film deaf speakers in order to analyze both the SL lexicon and its syntax (ibid.): the exercise not being possible without writing, he developed D'Sign (Jouison, 1978), a transcription system that, unlike SN, was born with the intent to transcribe the whole speech and not just isolated signs. Like his predecessors, whose works he probably did not know (Jouison, 1995), he opted for a linear arrangement and did not choose particularly iconic characters.

None of the systems presented so far have ever been used in schools to permit deaf children to write their own language<fnref n="14" />. The reasons are that they all have the same kind of problems:

<footnote n="14">14. However, the strong appreciation of some members of the French deaf community for Jouison's precursor work, both with regard to D'Sign and the recognition of SL as a true language, leads some educators of deaf children to hope for a reworking of D'Sign, to be able to use it at school (e.g., SEB Poitiers: Service Education Bilingue en Poitou-Charentes, http://seb.poitiers.free.fr/seb.htm).</footnote>
m< Ṣμ̄v̄uəΛ-ɛ̈k̄wvz vè Ṣμ̄v̄ʊ̄wvz·J m<
ΙΙσqo·ηφ̄ικxI ψ>§vòq̄us vè Ṣμ̄v̄ʊ̄wvz·J vè
φ̂ικμ'έεςΙΙ·λζεζ vè ΙΙυλ·Λ Μ>κ'ΙγμΙ ΙΙΙ·
ΙΙυλ·φων·ην·α>ν·Ιου·q̄vσ·Ι·ν έζψυμολ·
ΛΙ·φων·ην·α>ν·ο·z·ψmIV m< νó φ'σ'ψxuè
·ηθ>λι·ΙΙσψυμοημΙ m< νó φικ'φψ>§σωσ·ηκ·εψικ
m< (φικ'φ)ψ>§σω·φ'σ>ν φικ'ψυσ·qv ΙΙσψυμοημΙ
m< νó μλλ·κ·ημακ·νλ·λ Ζιμλλ·κμακ·νλ·ψmIV
κ'έμλωσ εζψυμολ·λι·κ·φων·σó ψmjóν
ςμ̄v̄ʊ̄wvzè ώψqóμημ" ςμḡv·xmlv·è (μ
φ·δ"μυφ·ε·Ecμη·q·μν·μπσ) νφ·φ·η"μυφ·ε·Ecμ
q·μν·μπσ νφ·φμης αη>κ'μη έκ'ψηḡσ·φ·
·φ'μυφ·ε·Ecμη·q'φη·εςφων ηκφ'ψηq̄sz·ηςψσsz
·ηκxāsz φ·δ"μυφ·ε··Ecμη·q·ε Ṣμ̄v̄ʊ̄wvz
ηκ·ο·ψλ·ουου·σσσ·α' Λσ·ζψυυαγ·σσσ·κημ
·ημλιν·α>ν·VČ

A character walks in a swimming pool facility, buys a ticket which he exchanges for a coat hanger after thanking the receptionist. He takes off his clothes (sweater, pants, shoes), puts them on the hanger and brings it back to its place. He goes into the shower. after having checked its temperature with his foot. Coming out of the shower he goes through a gate and discovers a huge pool, along which people are running. He sees a diving board. A diver jumps and enters the water.

<caption>FIGURE 4. Example of a discourse in LSF transcribed using D'Sign; on the right, a non-literal translation of it</caption>

- Almost all of them have been developed to produce SL dictionaries, and in times when TUs were considered extra-linguistic idiosyncratic manifestations and the role of non-manual components (gaze, body movements, etc.) was considered marginal. Therefore, they offer a linear vision of SL (which, on the contrary, is multilinear) in which the facial expressions are considered marginal and the only units represented are the LUs, making impossible to code the signed speech. The only exception is D'Sign, but probably just because its inventor had no knowledge of the then linguistic theories.

- The choice of linearly arranging the different elements allows establishing an ordered set but in fact decomposes the time dimension (i.e., reading one character after the other) of an element that is perceived globally (since all parameters concur simultaneously to the sign realization), thus imposing an effort to decipher and recompose information.

- The choice of iconic characters should make it easier to read and learn a system, but these characters are often difficult to trace, making the writing process laborious; furthermore, the characters are not always well discriminated from each other, therefore they risk of being confused both in writing and in reading.

- The small number of characters, despite being an advantage in the learning phase, does not allow to distinguish between signs very similar but with different meanings. Reading therefore becomes not only a process of decrypting symbols but a work of re-association of meanings based on the context (when available).

All these linear systems lack the ability to provide not only a written but also an “intuitive” form of SL that allows children to focus on linguistic reflection and not just on deciphering the writing system. For
this reason it is necessary to develop a writable but, above all, easily readable system, able to represent the different characteristics of the language (multi-linearity, importance of both manual and non-manual components), this being the aim of another SL writing system, Sign-Writing.

## 6. SignWriting

SignWriting (Fig. 5) has been invented in 1974 by choreographer Valerie Sutton, already author of DanceWriting, a dance notation system. Contrary to the SL writing systems presented so far (D'Sign excluded), SignWriting was created with the intention of writing SLs and not of transcribing them. For this reason, great attention was paid to the reading process which is made simple by the use of the analogy between the signing and the writing spaces.

<figure><img src="image_176.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 5. The sign [HOUSE] written using SignWriting</figcaption></figure>

In SignWriting, (4-dimensional) signs are represented in a 2-dimensional vignette (x, y) where the width (x) and the height (y) correspond to those of the signer, while the depth (z) and the temporal deployment (t) of the sign are represented by graphic expedients. For example, a curved movement away, ascending and then descending, will be represented by ↗ (see it larger in Fig. 6a): the use of the arrow allows to add information on the sign temporality, transforming in a simple drawing element the trace that the hand seems to design in space; the use of a thickening at the origin of the arrow (its "tail") allows to give indications about the depth of the sign, transforming it into mere perspective (the closer, the bigger). Fig. 6 shows this movement and its opposite, that is, a curved approaching movement, with the thickening towards the tip of the arrow (its "neck").

The vignette is therefore an analogical reduction of the signing space, like that found in drawings that were, and still are, used to create SL dictionaries. It takes into account all the parameters of SL, whether manual (configuration, orientation, position and movement) or non-manual (facial expressions, positions and movements of the body, shoulders and
<figure><img src="image_177.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 6. Upward and then downward curved movement that (a) moves away or (b) approaches the signer's body</figcaption></figure>

head, etc.), without a priori view on which components should or should not be considered as participating in meaning transmission.

Still, SignWriting is not a simple drawing. Inside the vignette there are characters, called SignWriting Symbols (SWSYM) or glyphs, which rigorously encode the way in which each occurrence of each parameter must be represented: the straight movement of above will not be en-coded by any arrow, but by a specific SWSYM, which will be different from that used to describe a shorter or more curved movement, a move-ment opposite or directed in another direction, performed with the right or the left hand.

The high number of SWSYMS (over 37,000) is compensated by the systematic nature of their organization (Table 1), since there are 432 "prototypical" SWSYMS to which they are associated in a relatively rigid way (Bianchini, 2012) of rules that allow to decline them and to obtain the total number of possible SWSYMS<fnref n="15" />. For example, a prototype rep-resenting a configuration of the hand will require 4 rules: hand (the right hand and the left hand are drawn mirrored); plane (the union or separation between the dash representing the fingers and the shape rep-resenting the palm makes it possible to distinguish whether the palm is resting on the horizontal or vertical plane); orientation (the angle of the glyph allows you to know the orientation of the hand on the plane); color (the color of the hand, white, black or two-tones, makes it possi-ble to distinguish which part of the hand is visible to the signer). Thus, knowing the 4 rules that apply to all configurations, and knowing how to design the prototype of a specific configuration, 96 SWSYM can already be used; knowing how to design the prototypes of the 242 configura-

<footnote n="15">15. While these rules are clearly stated Sutton, SW development over the years re-sulted in many exceptions (Bianchini and Borgia, 2012). In her dissertation, Bianchini (2012) has suggested a reclassification of SW that guarantees, without changing its basic principles, an application without exception of the rules established by Sutton.</footnote>
tions will permit 23,232 SWSYMS, that is more than half of the existing SWSYMS.

<table><caption>TABLE 1. Characteristics driven by different SWSYM representing the configuration (hooked index)<fnref n="16" /></caption><thead><tr><th>SWSYM</th><th>options</th><th>□</th><th>□</th><th>□</th><th>□</th><th>◆</th><th>□</th><th>◆</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>hand</td><td>□ (right) □ (left)</td><td>D</td><td>G</td><td>D</td><td>G</td><td>D</td><td>G</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>plane</td><td>□ (vertical)<br>□ (horizontal)</td><td>V</td><td>V</td><td>V</td><td>V</td><td>H</td><td>H</td><td>H</td></tr><tr><td>orientation</td><td>□ ◇ ◇ P ◇ ◇</td><td>0°</td><td>45°</td><td>90°</td><td>135°</td><td>180°</td><td>225°</td><td>270°</td><td>315°</td></tr><tr><td>side</td><td>□ (palm) □ (side) ■ (back)</td><td>P</td><td>C</td><td>D</td><td>P</td><td>C</td><td>D</td><td>P</td><td>C</td></tr></tbody></table>

The 432 prototypes are easy to learn, as almost all (402 out of 432) have an iconic connection with their referent: the hand SWSYM looks like a hand, the mouth SWSYM looks like a mouth, the SWSYM of a movement looks like the trace left by the movement (Fig. 7).

<figure><img src="image_178.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 7. Examples of iconic SWSYM prototypes</figcaption></figure>

These characteristics of SW mean that 6–8 hours<fnref n="17" /> are often enough for students<fnref n="18" /> to acquire basic SW skills. Bianchini (ibid.) showed that

<footnote n="16">16. *Editor's note:* This character is called SIGNWRITING HAND-FIST INDEX BENT in the Unicode standard (“Sutton SignWriting Block,” U+1D806).</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17. 6 hours is the training time that a group of deaf signers required to produce the first text in SW (see infra); 8 hours is the time dedicated to SW classes within the degree course in “Sciences of language and French sign language,” at whose end students are able to read isolated signs and write signs of simple movements.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18. The competence in SL greatly influences this figure: in the SW course taught by the author, students with a better SL level obtain better scores on both reading</footnote>
the ease of SW use is linked both to its frequency of use, and to the
subject's competence in SL.

Between 1998 and 2010 (Di Renzo et al., 2011), under the impulse
of Elena Antinoro Pizzuto (EAP; 1951–2010), SW has been at the cen-
ter of numerous linguistic studies, carried out at the ISTC-CNR in Via
Nomentana in Rome (currently known as LaCaM), by a team called
“Written-LIS Lab” (“Laboratorio di LIS Scritta”; LLISS) which brought
together both deaf and hearing sign researchers¹⁹. Since the first days,
SW has shown its ability to be learned very quickly, to be read easily
and to stimulate metalinguistic reflection among the deaf who used it.

7. SignWriting as a Metalinguistic Tool

In 1998, after about 6 hours of SW tutorial, Tommaso Lucioli (TL) spon-
taneously wrote the short story “Home,” which can be considered the
first text in Written-LIS produced by a member of the LLISS. *Written-SL*
(W-SL) is the formalization, directly in written form, of a thought in SL;
it differs from *Face-to-Face-SL* (FF-SL), that is the formalization in “oral”
SL of the aforementioned thought, which is then recorded and subse-
quently transcribed in order to analyze it. Within the LLISS, the system
to formalize both W-SL and FF-SL is SW, but this could also be achieved
with other SL writing systems: however, SW seems to allow, compared
to other systems, a greater ease to develop metalinguistic reflections.

At the following meeting, TL proposed his text to the LLISS team
then present (all deaf signers). The subsequent discussion led not only
to the correction but also to the spontaneous analysis of different aspects
of TL's text (Pennacchi, 2008): the combined use of different types of
structures (i.e., [SNOW]²⁰ is a LU that allows to say that there was snow,

and writing tests than colleagues with lower levels; moreover, the lack of SL knowl-
edge seems to prevent even the simple decryption of the vignettes (i.e., their “reading
aloud” without understanding the meaning).

19. SW was introduced to the ISTCCNR in 1998, when P. Rossini and B. Pennacchi, both deaf signers, self-taught SW using Sutton's manual (1995); later, they taught SW to 4 other deaf signers, T. Lucioli, A. Di Renzo, L. Ponzo and L. Lamano. The LLISS was created when the SW research received some funds in 2005. In 2007, SW was also taught to 3 graduate students, G. Gianfreda (deaf signer), G. Petitta and C.S. Bianchini (both hearing signers). All these people (but L. Ponzo), together with E. Antinoro Pizzuto, constituted the LLISS.

20. Conventionally, in the LS study, glosses are written in capital letters between square brackets. However, it should be emphasized that the use of glosses to describe SL is highly controversial (Pizzuto and Pietrandrea, 2001). The author of this article thinks that using a gloss in VL (a researcher's subjective interpretation, which “flat-tens” the SL on his/her own VL) without connecting it to the very sign appearance does not allow to take into account the peculiar SL characteristics and leads to pro-
In the following months and years, countless texts of different
lengths and types were written at the LLISS: real or fictitious stories;
texts produced spontaneously or for needs related to LLISS research;
texts in FF-SL or in W-SL. In particular, in 2009 the “Pear stories in
LIS” corpus was created, consisting of different versions—both in FF-
SL and in W-SL—of Chafe’s “Pear Story” (1975). Whatever the nature of
the texts produced, their sharing with the other members of the group
has always led to a comparison of the older texts with the new ones
and to spontaneously formulate reflections which gained in complexity
and depth, as the group became more familiar with SW and competent
in concepts of SL linguistics. The observation of this phenomenon led
C.S. Bianchini, who reached the LLISS in 2007, to retrace the reflections
made before his arrival (thanks to the consultation of the lab notebooks)
and to stimulate new reflections through the analysis of texts produced
within the LLISS (especially the “Pear” corpus): all these reflections are
collected and examined in her doctoral dissertation (Bianchini, 2012)
and will be summarized below. To these, new reflections will be added,
reflections that emerged from the work of SL students (most hearing)
who have followed the SW lessons of C.S. Bianchini from 2010 to today
at the Université de Poitiers (France) and other training centers.

## 7.1. Reflections on the Text Typographic Structure

The distinction between a shopping list, a Shakespeare’s play, or a news-
paper article is not only in its content but also in its form. Thus, part
of the reflections that emerged at the LLISS focused on the question
“what form must a text have to be considered a written text?”. Already
in “Home” we see that TL inserts [FULL STOP] at the end of his story,
arguing that since it is a written text, it must necessarily end with a
period. The choice is linked to the lack of knowledge, at the time, of
the punctuation provided by SW, which provides SWSYM for the full
stop, comma, semicolon, and colon, exactly as in Latin writing. A few
months later, after the team learned how to use these SWSYM, numer-
ous discussions developed about the need for a comma in W-SL, or the
use of colons. Furthermore, such discussions were related to the FF-SL
too, leading the LLISS members to question whether it is right or not
to attribute a punctuation mark to the different pauses present in the
marked speech, but also to situations in which the pause is absent but
punctuation could provide a complement of information (e.g., at the be-
ginning of an enumeration, which would be announced in written VL
by a colon and divided by semicolons).

Another recurring reflection concerns the management of the sheet
space: for example, after discussing the need or not to give a title to
narrative texts, numerous reflections arisen on how to highlight it with
respect to the rest. In fact, SW does not provide the possibility of under-
lining, bold or italics. For this reason, LLISS members discussed differ-
ent solutions on the frontier between orality (write "the title is XXXX")
and writing (write the title horizontally instead of vertically like the rest
of the text<fnref n="21" />; frame it; write it in another color; etc.).

7.2. Reflections on the Differences Between Writing and Transcribing

Since the beginning, the LLISS members note that SL writing implies
considering the absence of immediate context and of the interlocutor
but also the presence of co-text: the W-SL cannot therefore be a simple
transposition of the FF-SL. This leads the team to speculate about "what
differentiates FF-SL from W-SL?", so much so that a member asked EAP
"are the books you read written or transcribed?".

Comparing different texts in W-SL and FF-SL, it initially seemed
necessary to prefer LUs over TUs, since understanding of the former
is less linked to the context. However, this choice would have distorted
the SL, since in narrative texts TUs constitute about 90% of the signs
produced (Sallandre, 2003)<fnref n="22" />. By comparing, in the “Pear” corpus, the
same part of history but expressed in FF-SL and in W-SL it was pos-
sible to deepen the reflection, leading to the conclusion that it is not a
question of replacing TUs with LUs, but of making more explicit the
concepts expressed by TUs by using both LUs and TUs. For example, in
the “Pear Story,” a farmer collects pears by putting them in the pocket
of his apron (Fig. 9). In FF-SL, this scene is described by the LU [PEAR]
followed by a TU [PICK like so] and a unique TU that condenses [PUT
like so PEARS IN THE POCKET like so PLACED there] (Fig. 9a). In
W-SL, on the other hand, the same sequence is described by the same
author by 3 TUs [CORD BEHIND THE NECK like so] [TRIANGLE IN
FRONT like so] [POCKET like so], then by 2 LUs [EQUAL] and [KAN-
GAROO], the renewal of the TU [POCKET] but used this time to say
without showing (as if it were a LU), followed by the LUs [INSIDE] and
[PEAR] and finally by the same condensed sign used in FF-SL [PUT like
so PEARS IN THE POCKET like so PLACED there]<fnref n="23" /> (Fig. 9b). The
explication can be done by using LUs which clarify the various parts

<footnote n="21">21. Apart the very first texts, such as “Home,” the SW texts produced at the LLISS are written vertically, since the LLISS members had noticed that this made it easier to maintain the spatial references necessary to SL; also this choice is the result of metalinguistic reflections on the use of the sheet space.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">22. The deaf's fear that SL writing may "distort" the language is often reported in research on the impact of a writing system on the deaf community (Bianchini, 2012; Garcia et al., 2007).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">23. It is possible to notice slight differences in the choice of SWSYMSS to encode this sign. In fact, there is still no orthographic standard in SW, and is therefore possible to</footnote>
of the TUs, by more detailed LUs and by procedures such as the use of metaphors and comparisons with other visual realities (e.g., “a pocket like that of a kangaroo”).

<table><caption>FIGURE 9. The introduction of the apron pocket by TL is (a) implicit in Face-to-Face-SL and (b) explicit in Written-SL (with approximated verbal labels)</caption><thead><tr><th>(a) FF-SL</th><th>(b) W-SL</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><img src="image_pear.png" alt="Pear icon: a circle with a question mark in the top-left corner"></td><td><img src="imageEQUAL.png" alt="EQUAL icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and two arms, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td></tr><tr><td><img src="image_pick.png" alt="Pick icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a circle with a dot in the top-right corner"></td><td><img src="image_EQUAL.png" alt="EQUAL icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td></tr><tr><td><img src="image_picklike.png" alt="PICK like so icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a dot in the top-right corner"></td><td><img src="image_KANGAROO.png" alt="KANGAROO icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td></tr><tr><td><img src="image_pocket.png" alt="POCKET like so icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td><td><img src="image POCKET.png" alt="POCKET icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td></tr><tr><td><img src="image_pocketlike.png" alt="POCKET like so icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td><td><img src="image POCKET.png" alt="POCKET icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td></tr><tr><td><img src="image_pocketlike.png" alt="POCKET like so icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td><td><img src="image POCKET.png" alt="POCKET icon: a stick figure with a head, a mouth, and a nose, holding a stick and a circle with a line through it"></td></tr></tbody></table>

A further examination of these reflections has led to the identification of situations in which it is necessary to pay particular attention to being explicit, as in the expression of emotions (usually conveyed orally by the facial expression alone, while in W-SL it is often necessary to make them explicit with a LU) or in the management of spatial references for deixis and anaphora (in FF-SL, deictic elements can be barely hinted with a finger or a head or body movement, while in W-SL they must be underlined and sometimes made explicit by LU or TU—especially in situation transfers).

write the same sign in slightly different ways: however, the reading of this sign will be identical.
## 7.3. Reflections on the Concepts of Spelling, Standard and Error

In Fig. 9, the complex sign [PUT like so PEARS IN THE POCKET like so PLACED there] is identical in both FF-SL and W-SL. However, while the text in W-SL was conceived and written by the same author, the text in FF-SL was conceived and signed always by the same author but was transcribed by another LLISS member. Between the two “writers” (the writer of the W-SL text and the transcriber of the FF-SL narrative) it is possible to notice a difference in the choice of SWSYMS used to encode the sign. These differences, highlighted from a search in the “Pear” corpus for signs with equivalent meaning but written and/or transcribed by different LLISS members, allowed the team to reflect on the question “how should a certain sign be written in SW?”.

Since SW is a relatively new system, with a small number of users, for which Sutton itself neither imposes nor proposes strict rules, it is not possible to speak of SW “spelling”. However, while sharing the texts, the LLISS members were able to state with absolute certainty that a vignette needed correction, and this was already evident from “Home”. From the first discussions on the subject, the criterion of “readability” emerged: if the reader can easily read the sign and if what e signs (the form) and what e understands (the meaning) correspond to the intention of the author, then the sign is written correctly. However, this criterion involves “testing” each text with numerous readers in order to be sure that the own spelling is correct.

The reflections carried out in this area did not, in the end, lead to the definition of any SW “good spelling,” but allowed to underline numerous things to do or to avoid in order to produce readable texts. For example, it is necessary not to overload the vignette with information (e.g., it is better to divide the sign into two vignettes or to leave out details that are not relevant for understanding); you must try to be redundant in the fundamental information (e.g., to indicate that the whole body moves to the right, it is better to place the indication of movement at both head and shoulder height); once chosen how to code a certain information, keep consistent; etc.

## 7.4. Reflections on the Concepts and the Metalinguistic Vocabulary

The reflections on how to express the concepts also led the LLISS members to deepen the concepts of LU and TU, questioning on “how to distinguish a TU from a LU in writing?,” e.g., [POCKET like so] from [POCKET] (see Fig. 9). According to Cuxac (2000), author at the origin of the distinction between “saying without showing” (i.e., the LUs) and “saying while showing” (i.e., the TUs), the gaze is different in the two types of structure: in the LUs it is directed towards the interlocu-
tor while in the TUs it is directed towards the hand or in any case the signing space. But in writing the interlocutor is absent, which makes it difficult to decide whether a gaze represented by a SWSYM is directed to the surroundings or at an imaginary interlocutor. For this reason, after several reflections arising from text misunderstandings (establishing a "showing glance" where there is none can completely change the meaning), a solution was developed: inventing a new SWSYM, a "look at the interlocutor" (Fig. 10a) to be inserted in each sign of LU type.

This reflection led the group to better understand concepts such as LU and TU, but also to question "how to provide SL with a specific terminology for such concepts?": while in the VL it is possible to import a word from one language to another, the change of expressive modality between VL and SL requires giving a "visual identity" to the concepts, which requires understanding them in depth. Thus, while at the beginning of the LLISS concepts like LU and TU were simply expressed through the realization of the letters U.L. and U.T. in manual alphabet, the subsequent metalinguistic reflections led to the creation of true signs for different linguistic concepts: "lexematic unit," "transfer unit," "iconicity," "visée illustrative" and other terms related to Cuxac's theory, but also "SignWriting," "Written-SL," "Face-to-Face-SL". The creation of a new sign requires a strong understanding of the different implications of the different concepts, which can only arise from the metalinguistic reflections made about the concepts themselves. Seeking how to establish a sign allowed to deepen the concepts, having a sign to express them allowed to simplify the manipulation of concepts and to strengthen their understanding, favoring the possibility of further reflecting on them.

Similarly, a sign has been attributed to different SWSYMS, so as to be able to more easily talk about the way an element is written: this is the case of the SWSYM "gaze looking at the interlocutor" (Fig. 10a), which represents two "i" resting at eye level and that soon was also used as a sign for "lexematic unit" (Fig. 10b).

A particular phenomenon is worth noting: in 2010, Cuxac and Antinoro Pizzuto decided to rename the "standard sign" to LU. Several sessions followed in which the LLISS members discussed, starting with the texts and theoretical explanations of EAP, on what this name change implied. Eventually, the sign "standard sign" became obsolete and was replaced by "lexematic unit" (first in the form of initials "L.U." and then as a real sign).

## 8. Conclusions

The development of metalinguistic skills allows to pass from simply using a language to also understanding why it works in a certain way. Let-
<figure><img src="image_179.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 10. (a) the SWSYM invented by the LLISS members to write “gaze looking at the interlocutor” and (b) the sign associated first with this SWSYM and then with the concept of “lexematic unit” (in which the gaze is turned towards the interlocutor)</figcaption></figure>

ting bilingual children to compare their languages has shown great benefits in acquiring these metalinguistic skills, and this is true whether you work on the oral or written part of the language. Numerous researchers have shown that deaf children are in a SL/VL bilingual situation, and that knowing an SL facilitates the VL knowledge too.

However, these analyses are always conducted in a trans-modal way, i.e., measuring how knowledge of the “oral” SL facilitates VL writing skills; of course, this is dictated by the absence of a written form for SL.

The various attempts to write SLs are inadequate to favor metalinguistic awareness as they omit fundamental parts of the sign (such as the non-manual components) and reduce a multilinear and threedimensional language to simple string, a one-dimensional representation. The only exception is SignWriting, which tries to propose an analog representation of the sign, showing both manual and non-manual components through a system that focuses on readability.

From its very first uses at the LLISS, it was possible to note that SW is a tool capable of stimulating metalinguistic activity both in those who write, and, above all, in those who read with it. Over the years, reflections have emerged on punctuation and notes, but also on layout and other formal characteristics that help define concepts such as sentences and paragraphs, together with the type of text under examination and the function of the different text parts. SW allowed also to reflect on the notions of orthography, standards, errors, even without the basic spelling rules of Western VLs. Its use has led LLISS members to reflect on both the lexical and syntactic structure of SL, highlighting the importance of non-manual components and the presence of nuances of meaning conveyed by small form variations. It also allowed to perceive the difference between writing and transcribing. Finally, SW brought out the need for a new terminology in order to formulate the metalinguistic reflections that it caused to spring out.
Thus, SW constitutes a valid tool to allow the deaf to compare the written modality of SL with that of VL, facilitating the understanding of the functions of writing, essential to successfully penetrate the realm of written VL.

However, the metalinguistic reflections collected by Bianchini (2012) in her thesis were almost all produced during the reading of SW. In fact, one of the “winning” features of SW, in terms of the development of metalinguistic skills, is its very high readability. Unfortunately, ease of reading does not go hand in hand with ease of writing, which turns out to be a long, laborious process and which, in the absence of clear spelling rules, requires continuous revisions to ensure correct readability of the text. In a school setting, therefore, the child could use SW to reflect on texts produced upstream by the teacher, but he could hardly use SW to write for himself; in the same way, the teacher could program the production of texts but could hardly improvise a text in SW during the lesson. SW is therefore a tool that can satisfy only a part of the functions that are required from a scholastic writing system. At present, this has led to exclude the use of SW in schools in almost all instances.

Nevertheless, in light of the advantages that the introduction of a form of SL writing may bring on the metalinguistic development of deaf children, one wonders whether it would not be worth trying anyhow to introduce SW in schools a.s.a.p., putting forward its potential above its limits, pending a more performing system (or a substantial evolution of SW to overcome the problem of its writability).

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<figure><img src="image_180.png" /></figure>
Language Identity
Through Cyrillic Script

From Romanian to Moldovan by Automatic
Transliteration in the Wikimoldia Project

Christian Koch

*Abstract.* Wikimoldia was a website active from 2018 to 2019 on which the Ro-
manian Wikipedia was transliterated into Cyrillic by using a PHP script. This
paper discusses the technical background of the automatic transliteration per-
formed in Wikimoldia and links the project of a Cyrillic-language Romanian
Wikipedia to the political and linguistic controversies surrounding the status
of the Moldovan language. It discusses how Wikimoldia can benefit the Cyrillic-
socialised minorities in the eastern periphery of Romanian-speaking areas. The
use of machine transliteration can also be of interest in the context of other mul-
tialphabetic languages.

1. Introduction

Wikimoldia sounds like the name of another of Wikipedia's many off-
shoots (cf. Wikimedia, Wikisource, etc.), but alludes to a geographical
area, namely the Republic of Moldova. If one tries to open the page
http://wikimoldia.org today, there will not be anything of what was of-
fered here between September 2018 and September 2019: a Romanian
Wikipedia in Cyrillic script.

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the technical functioning of
this automatically generated page and to discuss the potentials and dif-
ficulties of the project. Furthermore, the paper deals with the sociolin-
guistic background that may have motivated the Wikimoldia project.
Understanding linguistic diversity in Wikipedia as a contribution to
minority language vitalisation (cf. Born, 2007; Coulmas, 2018, 198f.),
Wikimoldia can also raise the question of an attempt to vitalise this lan-
guage, however it has to be defined at the same time what kind of lan-
guage Moldovan actually is. From a linguistic point of view, the term
'Moldovan language' is highly problematic and requires a critical analy-
sis, not least in view of the fact that, even within Romance linguistics,

<figure><img src="image_181.png" /></figure>
the Romance-speaking varieties in the far east of Europe are among the rather unknown territories. The first part of the article is devoted to this aspect, before the following sections take a closer look at Wikimoldia from a technical and functional perspective.<fnref n="1" />

## 2. On the Status of the Moldovan Language

### 2.1. Stages of Language Naming

The term ‘Moldovan language’ (Rom. *limbă moldovenească*) has a different meaning in different political contexts and time periods. Gabinskij (2002, p. 133) indicates ‘Moldovan’ as a non-scientific everyday term<fnref n="2" /> for the language of the Republic of Moldova, but also as a subglottonym of the glottonym ‘Romanian’ (ibid., p. 139), which may seem acceptable from a scientific point of view, if one speaks of a (geopolitical) variety of Romanian rather than of a language of its own. However, this also seems problematic because in dialectological descriptions the Moldovan dialect is understood as a geolectic area north of the Daco-Romanian dialect (cf. Olariu, 2017, p. 108) and this geolectic area is largely situated within the political borders of Romania.

The territory of the modern Moldovan Republic had an eventful history along the 20th century: Bessarabia, previously part of the Russian Empire, became in its majority a part of Greater Romania in 1918, then in 1944 it converted into the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, before the independent Republic of Moldova was founded in 1991. The affiliation to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union is still visible today in the presence of the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet. Since its foundation, the present state has been divided politically and, to a certain extent, linguistically into two regions on both sides of the Dniester River. Transnistria as a breakaway republic with half a million inhabitants in eastern Moldova confronts the country with a conflict which is still insoluble and hinders the integration into European institutions and in the rapprochement with Romania. The ongoing linguistic separation is based on the use of the Latin alphabet, as—with the exception of Transnistria—the Latin alphabet has been reintroduced in the independent Republic of Moldova: “decretarea limbii române ca limbă de stat şi reintroducerea alfabetului latin, din 3 noiembre 1990”<fnref n="3" /> (cited in

<footnote n="1">1. This article a slightly extended and revised English translation of Koch (forthcoming).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. German original: “(nichtwissenschaftliche) Alltagsbezeichnung”.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. Translation: the decree of Romanian as the national language and the reintroduction of the Latin alphabet, from 3 of November 1990.</footnote>
Cimpoeșu and Musteață, 2018, p. 50). While the Declaration of Independence that is quoted here still refers to the Romanian language, a new decree was issued in 1994: "limba de stat a Republicii Moldova este limba moldovenească"<fnref n="4" /> (cited in Olariu, 2017, p. 22). This can be understood as a return to Soviet identity construction which the Romanians Dorin Cimpoeșu and Sergiu Musteață accuse in harsh words:

> au fost legiferate tezele staliniste false despre apartenența etnică și lingvistică a populației românești prin introducerea în legea fundamentală a sintagmelor 'limbă moldovenească' și 'popor moldovenesc' contrare adevărului științific și istoric<fnref n="5" /> (Cimpoeșu and Musteață, 2018, p. 61)

However, one can also more moderately assume a national identity building in which Moldova breaks away from its position as Romania's satellite state and promotes linguistic independence with its own glottonym. A bit later, the national anthem entitled *Limba Noastră* has also been established, which, along with the national holiday *Limba Noastră* (*cea Română*), emphasises the outstanding importance of the national language in Moldova. The text of the anthem, which goes back to a much older poem by Alexei Mateevici (1888–1917), uses the politically more neutral possessive determiner ('our language') instead of a glottonym.

As an official language, Moldovan had a coding in the ISO 639 standard as "mo"/"mol," which was however already abolished in 2008 (cf. https://iso639-3 SIL.org/code/rum). Finally, in 2013 it was decided to revert to the designation *limbă română* in official language use, probably also in order to strengthen the ties with Romania and thus the bridge to the European Union. This step was justified by the designation in the declaration of independence:

> prevederea conținută în Declarația de Independență referitoare la limba română ca limbă de stat a Republicii Moldova prevalează asupra prevederii referitoare la limba moldovenească conținute în articolul 13 al Constituției<fnref n="6" /> (cited in ibid., p. 24).

In Transnistria, the renaming of the language was not applied, but Moldovan in Cyrillic script remained the official language (along with

<footnote n="4">4. Translation: the official language of the Republic of Moldova is the Moldovan language.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5. Translation: false Stalinist theses on the ethnic and linguistic affiliation of the Romanian people were established by law, introducing in the basic law the expressions "Moldovan language" and "Moldovan people," which contradict scientific and historical facts.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6. Translation: the provision on the Romanian language as the official language of the Republic of Moldova contained in the Declaration of Independence takes precedence over the provision on the Moldovan language in Article 13 of the Constitution.</footnote>
certain degree of autonomy, so that their graphemes did not need to reflect all the special features of Russian. Individual letters of the Russian alphabet were converted and new letters were introduced—exactly one in the case of Romanian. This will be illustrated by a few examples (Tab. 1).

<table><caption>TABLE 1. Examples of Romanian letters in Cyrillic script</caption><thead><tr><th>Example</th><th>Sound</th><th>Russian</th><th>„Moldovan“</th><th>Romanian</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>(1)</td><td>[i]</td><td>ы</td><td>ы</td><td>â, î</td></tr><tr><td>(2)</td><td>[j]</td><td>ь</td><td>ь</td><td>i</td></tr><tr><td>(3)</td><td>[ə]</td><td>(э = [ɛ])</td><td>э</td><td>ă</td></tr><tr><td>(4)</td><td>[ɔ̃ʃ]</td><td>-</td><td>ж</td><td>g (+e/i)</td></tr><tr><td>(5)</td><td>[ĩa]</td><td>я</td><td>я</td><td>ia</td></tr><tr><td>(6)</td><td>[l]</td><td>ль</td><td>л</td><td>l</td></tr></tbody></table>

1. The unrounded closed central vowel [i] is characteristic of both Russian and Romanian, and the Cyrillic writing can solve the problem of the two graphemes <â> and <î> of Romanian.

2. The letter <i>ă> is used in Romanian to indicate, inter alia, the palatalisation of consonants which are syllable-final or usually word-final. In some Slavic languages, the so-called soft sign <ь> follows on the palatalised consonants. The difficulty of transliteration due to the different functions of <i>ă> is explained below.

3. For the Romanian language, the shwa sound written as <ă> is characteristic and not uncommon even in stressed syllables. Russian knows the sound only in unstressed syllables as a reduction level of /a/ and /o/. At this point, an imitation of Russian grapheme-phoneme correspondence would hardly be possible, and instead the third-last letter <э> of the Russian alphabet is used, whose Russian phonological value /ɛ/ is not necessary for the representation of a specific sound in Romanian.

4. Romanian and Gagauzian have got their own letter for the affricate /d̥ʃ/: <ж>, which is distinguished by a diacritic breve from <ж>, because <ж> as the transliteration of Rom. <j> is also needed. This shows the preference in Cyrillic scripts for diacritics over digraphs, although a spelling like <дж> would be intuitively easier to read.

5. In various Slavic languages, iotation plays an important role, i.e., some vowels have an approximate initial [j]. Russian has its own letters for this purpose (<ю>—[ju], <я>—[ja], possibly also <ё>—[jo]). The letter <e>, which is identical in both alphabets, is regularly used with iotation in both Russian and Romanian. Another special feature of Russian is the graphic marking of the intervocalic iotation, which
is also conceivable as an epenthesis in Romanian, but is not graphically marked. As the last letter in the name of *Викимолдия* shows, the transliteration is based on the graphic representation of the epenthesis according to the Russian model.

6. However, the name *Викимолдия* shows that <л> can work without a soft sign for the articulation of the lateral [l], since the articulation of velarised (or hard) [ł] is irrelevant for Romanian.<fnref n="8" />

Remarkable about the transliteration rules developed during the So-viet era is that regional peculiarities of the articulation of the Moldovan variety were not taken into account. Instead, the pronunciation stan-dard of Daco-Romanian (cf. Gabinskij, 2002, p. 135) is fully applicable and no attempt has been made—as it has happened with other Soviet regional languages—to represent a variety in Cyrillic that did not have any established writing system before. The demarcation from Romania rather occurred in the field of lexis as a rejection of the so-called *limbă păsărească* ('bird language'), which denotes the more sophisticated lan-guage oriented towards the Romanian norm (cf. ibid., p. 135).

### 3. Key Data on Wikimoldia

The site http://wikimoldia.org was launched in September 2018 and was then accessible for one year. We can presume that the termina-tion of the online presence happened due to the fact that the contract of use for the domain was not renewed. Therefore, direct access to the URL is no longer possible. Via the large web archive *Wayback Machine* (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://wikimoldia.org/*), 520 pages are still available, but this is only a fraction of the several hundred thousand pages once available.

Wikimoldia can be seen as a phantom page to the Romanian Wikipedia, because the contents of Wikipedia are transliterated into Cyrillic with the help of a PHP script, that we are going to discuss in more detail in the following section. In addition, the name *Wikipedia* is replaced by *Викимолдия*, so that the artificiality of the pages is not obvi-ous at first glance (Figs. 1 and 2).

In the top left-hand corner, it is noticeable that the signature of the logo "Wikipedia / Enciclopedia liberă" has not been transliterated or replaced, as this is a graphic element. The exact layout and hypertext structure are transferred to Wikimoldia; all hyperlinks to articles work and lead to corresponding pages in Wikimoldia. However, the search field at the top right is not functional (Fig. 3).

<footnote n="8">8. This does not mean that in Russian there would be a soft sign at this point. Rather, unlike in Romanian, *Молдавия* is articulated with velarised [l].</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_182.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Partial screenshot of the Wikimoldia homepage</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_183.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 2. Partial screenshot of the Romanian Wikipedia homepage (ro.wikipedia.org)</figcaption></figure>

It is only possible to enter words in Latin script and this will bring the user to the Romanian Wikipedia. Thus, in the sense of Leca-Tsiomis (2006), the encyclopaedic order works by the hypertextual reference structure, but not the alphabetical order in the form of direct look-up. In Wikimoldia it was only possible to call up an article in a targeted manner by manually replacing "ro.wikipedia" with "wikimoldia" in the URL of the Romanian Wikipedia article.

Before discussing the functionality and potentials of Wikimoldia in more detail in the following sections, the question should be allowed whether Wikimoldia could actually represent something like a vitalisation attempt, i.e., in particular whether the Cyrillic transliteration of
<figure><img src="image_184.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 3. Search field “Căutare în Wikipedia” in Wikimoldia</figcaption></figure>

the Romanian Wikipedia was seriously used. In June 2019, the usage data analysis of SimilarWeb (https://www.similarweb.com) still provided numbers for the period May to March 2019 (Tab. 2).

<table><caption>TABLE 2. Wikimoldia user numbers according to SimilarWeb</caption><tr><td>Total Visits (March-May 2019)</td><td>46,122</td></tr><tr><td>Monthly Visits</td><td>15,374</td></tr><tr><td>Monthly Unique Visitors</td><td>&lt; 5,000</td></tr><tr><td>Avg. Visit Duration</td><td>00:01:07</td></tr><tr><td>Pages / Visit</td><td>1.53</td></tr></table>

In the three months, the website was accessed 46,122 times, with the number of users estimated at less than 5,000. On the basis of the described diversion via the Romanian Wikipedia articles, one could assume that the number of actual users could be higher, since—unlike in Wikipedia—it was not possible to access concrete articles via the Wikimoldia homepage. SimilarWeb also made it possible to determine from which countries users accessed the site (Tab. 3).

<table><caption>TABLE 3. User proportions by country according to SimilarWeb</caption><thead><tr><td></td><td>Country</td><td>Traffic Share</td><td>Country Rank</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>Ukraine</td><td>33.36%</td><td>·148,316</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Russia</td><td>16.31%</td><td>·722,063</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Moldova</td><td>13.02%</td><td>·42,216</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Turkey</td><td>10.21%</td><td>·1,153,092</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>United States</td><td>4.39%</td><td>·1,441,191</td></tr></tbody></table>

According to this data, Moldova is only in third place after Ukraine and Russia. This may be simply because Ukrainian and Russian IP addresses are used in Transnistria. But it can also be linked to the Romanian-Moldovan minorities mentioned above, especially in Ukraine. Moreover, the higher number of users from these coun-
tries could also have something to do with the Cyrillic script, which builds a bridge to Romanian here. In August 2019, for example, https://news.ru quotes Wikimoldia as the source for a photo of the former Romanian Education Minister Ecaterina Andronescu (https://news.ru/europe/slova-ob-iznasilovannoj-devochke-stoili-rumynskomu-ministru-dolzhnosti/). It is probable that a Russian reporter in the search for a picture of “Екатерина Андронеску” has just found a relevant result via Wikimoldia. This example, as well as the user figures mentioned above, provide rough indications of a certain vitality of use for the period during which Wikimoldia was online.

# 4. Automatic Transliteration in Wikimoldia

## 4.1. Operating Modes

For the automatic transliteration of Romanian into Cyrillic letters according to the principles described above, the PHP script slava37md2 was published in GitHub in August 2018 (https://github.com/slava37md2/wikimoldia). It contains 361 paragraphs or 9,807 characters with so-called assignment operators for all letters of the Romanian alphabet, as well as for <k>, <q>, <w>, <x> and <y>, each separated into upper- and lowercase letters—the rules for upper- and lowercase are identical for the Latin and Cyrillic writing of Romanian. A very short readme file contains an explanatory description in English and Russian: "Script translits romanian (latin) to moldovan (cyr) characters Скрипт переводит румынские буквы в кириллицу. Можно переводить интернет-страницы. Например Википедию."<fnref n="9" />

Simple assignments can be made where a Romanian grapheme in Latin script has exactly one Cyrillic equivalent, e.g., <J> → <Ж> or <d> → <д>. Accordingly, the assignment operator consists of only one command (Fig. 4).

```php
case "J":
    echo "Ж";
    break;
```

<caption>FIGURE 4. Script of a simple assignment operator</caption>

The graphemes of Romanian which have different phonetic realisations depending on their position—in particular <g> and <c>—must

<footnote n="9">9. Translation of the Russian sentences: The script translates Romanian letters into Cyrillic. You can translate websites. For example Wikipedia.</footnote>
each be assigned to different Cyrillic letters, because the grapheme-
phoneme-correspondences in Cyrillic Romanian or “Moldovan” are al-
most completely unambiguous.<fnref n="10" /> Like in Italian, the Romanian <c>
when preceding the vowels <e> and <i> is articulated as a voiceless
prepalatal affricate [ç]. This articulatory rule can be resolved by the
digraph <ch> which, like <c> in all other positions, leads to velar ar-
ticulation as [k]. In automatic transliteration, a complex assignment
operator generates the letters <ç> and <к> depending on the position
(Fig. 5).

```python
case "c":
    {
        if ($str[$i+1] == "e" or $str[$i+1] == "i"
            or $str[$i+1] == "E" or $str[$i+1] == "I")
            { echo "ç"; break; }
        if ($str[$i+1] == "h" or $str[$i+1] == "H"
            and ($str[$i+2] == "e" or $str[$i+2] == "i"
                or $str[$i+1] == "E" or $str[$i+2] == "I"))
            { $i=$i+1; echo "к"; break; }
        echo "к";
        break;
    }
```

<caption>FIGURE 5. Script of a complex assignment operator</caption>

The following applies to complex assignments: Each larger defined
unit of characters has priority over smaller character units or individ-
ual characters. So simple assignments can be supplemented by addi-
tional condition sets for special cases. Nevertheless, the grapheme <i>
(or <I>), on which almost a quarter of the entire script is used, is at the
limit of automatic assignment possibilities. As an isolated vowel, <i>
should be rendered as <и>. However, especially at the end of a word,
<i> is usually not a vowel but indicates palatalisation (<ь>, cf. Tab. 1,
Ex. 2). In rising diphthongs, the iotified letters <ю> and <я> mentioned
in Tab. 1, Ex. 5, are used. In falling diphthongs, such as <ei>, but also
in the double <ii> that is frequent in Romanian, <й> is used, i.e., <ей>
and <ий>.

A short text example from the Romanian Wikipedia (https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Limbi) and the resulting transliteration will illustrate some of the complex assignments:

<footnote n="10">10. The only exceptions to graphophonic and phonographic unambiguity are the iotified letters <ю> and <я>, which are popular in Cyrillic (see Tab. 1, Ex. 5, and the transliteration of <i> below).</footnote>
(1) O limbă reprezintă un sistem abstract, complex, de comunicare verbală în-
tre oameni. În afară de forma orală **(limba vorbită)**, bazată pe articularea de
sunete, limbile actuale au în general și o formă grafică, **limba scrisă**.

(2) О лимбэ репрезинтэ ун систем абстракт, комплекс, де комуникаре вербалэ ынтре оамень. Ын афарэ де форма оралэ (лимба ворбитэ), базатэ пе артикуларя де сунете, лимбиле актуале ау ын женерал ши о формэ графикэ, лимба скрисэ.

There is nothing wrong in the automatic transliteration of the Ro-
manian text. Complex assignments are marked here, where the func-
tionality is clearly visible: the grapheme <g> is transliterated according
to the pronunciation once as <g> and once as <ж>. In the translitera-
tion of <i>, the assignment operator distinguishes between palatalisa-
tion in “оамень” and vowel realisation in “ши,” whereby a final <i> is
in most cases to be read as a palatalisation sign, but not in monosyllabic
words such as si, where it must be vocal.<fnref n="11" /> To end, in the transliteration
“articularea,” it can be seen that the final vowels are not individually
recognised as hiatus, but as a diphthong, reproduced with <я>.

4.2. Limits of the Automatic Transliteration

The text example shows overall that the assignment operators work.
However, in the following, some problems that cannot be solved with
the script are pointed out. Firstly, a number of special characters are
missing, i.e., letters with diacritics and other letters that go beyond the
basic Latin alphabet and that are not represented in Romanian. For
example, the name *Frédéric Chopin* is transliterated as *Фрédéрик Кхопин*,
with the two vowels <é> remaining, and the digraph <Ch>, since it
is not placed before <e> or <i>, is interpreted as two single conso-
nants. Moldovan spelling would normally orientate on the Russian vari-
ant *Фридéric Шопен*. So, it is not only special characters that cause
difficulties, but also foreign-language sound patterns, which would be
rendered phonetically when transferred to another writing system. It
would be conceivable, however, to make automatic transliteration ca-
pable of learning for this purpose, since it follows the principle—as de-
scribed above—that each larger sequence of letters is given priority over
smaller combinations and individual characters. Accordingly, proper
names could be continuously included into the script.<fnref n="12" />

<footnote n="11">11. The final <i> is not recognisable in the script as a vowel in infinitives (e.g., *a veni*). This is discussed below (Tab. 5).</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12. This alone, however, cannot solve the problem that when transliterating proper names, the original spelling would be added as a parenthesis. Particularly problematic is the retransliteration of proper names previously transcribed into the Latin alphabet, which are written in Cyrillic in the original.</footnote>
Another problem are symbol letters and abbreviations. In chemistry, for example, element symbols are represented by Latin letters independently of the writing system of a language. In Wikimoldia, however, “H₂O” changes to “X₂O”. For Roman numerals at least, a number of instructions has been preserved to prevent nonsensical transliteration. An incorrect abbreviation is pointed out in the forum for the script in GitHub (https://github.com/slava37md2/wikimoldia/issues/2): due to the positional phonetic realisation of the Romanian grapheme <c> (cf. Fig. 5), an error occurs in the abbreviation of ‘centimetre’ (Tab. 4).

<table><caption>TABLE 4. Incorrect automatic transliteration of Rom. *cm*</caption><thead><tr><th>Romanian</th><th>correctly<br>transliterated</th><th>automatically<br>transliterated</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><i>cm</i></td><td>&lt;ЧМ&gt;</td><td>&lt;КМ&gt;</td></tr><tr><td><i>km</i></td><td>&lt;КМ&gt;</td><td>&lt;КМ&gt;</td></tr></tbody></table>

Another special case of Romanian, which cannot be fully resolved in automatic transliteration, is homography, i.e., words that are spelt the same but pronounced differently. These include infinitives with the vocal ending -i (Tab. 5).

<table><caption>TABLE 5. Incorrect automatic transliteration of Rom. *dormi*</caption><thead><tr><th>Romanian</th><th>pronunciation</th><th>correctly<br>transliterated</th><th>automatically<br>transliterated</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><i>tu dormi</i></td><td>[·dormi]</td><td>&lt;дормь&gt;</td><td>&lt;дормь&gt;</td></tr><tr><td><i>tu vei dormi</i></td><td>[dormi]</td><td>&lt;дорми&gt;</td><td>&lt;дормь&gt;</td></tr></tbody></table>

In principle, the palatalising function of <i>·</i> at the end of a word is much more frequent, so that the special case of the infinitive is less significant. Homographs sometimes occur between the infinitive and the conjugated form for second person singular in present tense. But numerous verbs of the *i*-group have stem extensions (e.g., *a citi*—*tu citești*) or irregularities (e.g., *a veni*—*tu vii*). In these cases, there are no homographs and the infinitives could be assigned to the correct transliteration as individual lexemes. For the remaining verbs with homograph forms (*a dormi*, *a fugi*, *a ieși...*) a fully automatic software should be able to distinguish between infinitives and conjugated verb forms. In view of the (Balkan-typical) restrictive use of the infinitive, which only allows its use in a few constructions with auxiliary verbs or the preposition *a*, it would be conceivable to program with so-called regular expressions,
which can formally map the syntactic embedding of infinitives beyond
the level of lexemes.

The problems with automatic transliteration and their solutions pre-
sented in this section are purely technical. From a sociolinguistic per-
spective, however, the question may be asked concerning the interest of
an error-free transliteration of Romanian into Cyrillic script. This will
be the subject of the following section.

5. The Potentials of Wikimoldia

The previous considerations about Wikimoldia are based on insights
into the website when it was still active, on the analysis of the PHP script
in GitHub, and on the analysis of usage data. The research for further
background information on the creation and motivation of Wikimoldia
remained fruitless. Thus, we can only speculate about the intended
function of the website. The possible authorship, which is particularly
important with regard to a conceivable political motivation, will also be
discussed in this context.

Wikimoldia can be understood as an access to the Romanian
Wikipedia for a Cyrillic socialised audience. This is particularly im-
portant for the population of Transnistria, but also for Romanian mi-
norities in Ukraine. Although most Romanian speakers should be able
to read the language in Latin script, in terms of literacy the possibility
of reading in Cyrillic-script represents an additional benefit, provided
that the readers do not switch completely to the Russian or Ukrainian
Wikipedia. The above example, in which Wikimoldia was quoted on
a Russian news site, also shows that Moldova's neighbours—potentially
also Romania's Cyrillic-writing neighbours (Serbia, Bulgaria, Northern
Macedonia)—benefit from the Cyrillic online presence as a bridge to
Romanian-speaking culture.

Looking at the Wikipedia versions of different minority languages,
it is often found that there is only a sparse number of rather short arti-
cles, so the value may be in the perception of the languages, but not in
providing a useful encyclopaedia. In the case of Moldovan in the status
described above, i.e., as a variety whose distance from standard Roman-
ian is primarily defined by its script, the path of automatic translitera-
tion provides the possibility of generating a comprehensive encyclopaec-
dia on an *ad hoc* basis. While the previous section has explained how
to improve the transliteration performance by computer, for a real en-
cyclopaedia the suggestion could be made to freeze the transliterated
version, to repair it manually, and to enrich it with individual content—
although ethical and legal concerns may well be raised about the com-
plete transfer of Wikipedia to Wikimoldia. Although Wikipedia con-
tent can theoretically be used freely as so-called open content and al-
though even the elaborately developed Wiki structure is freely available
for the programming of independent variants, the transfer of the con-
tent without identifying the source is a plagiarism, and the replacement
of *Wikipedia* by *Викимодия* distorts the origin. But here as well, the gen-
esis of the encyclopaedia could be made more transparent in a revision.

Finally, the question of the *cui bono* and thus the authorship of the
Wikimoldia project can be raised. In the absence of precise indica-
tions, two quite contrary hypotheses on political motivation can be put
forward: On the one hand, as a contribution to the vitalisation of the
controversial Moldovan language, we could assume that the Transnis-
trian government and its post-Soviet continuation of the ideology of
Moldovan "creat in laboratoarele Moscovei"<fnref n="13" /> (Cimpoeșu and Musteață,
2018, p. 236) is the responsible agent behind this. On the other hand,
the exact opposite can be assumed, namely Wikimoldia as a liberally
oriented project that creates access to Romanian-influenced content
and thus a rapprochement with the rest of Moldova, Romania and Eu-
rope, which, through the direct transmission of standard Romanian, ul-
timately even expresses itself linguistically in the aforementioned *limbă
păsărească* that can also be understood as a protest against socialism (cf.
Gabinskij, 2002, p. 135). These are, however, free speculations that
would be conceivable alongside an apolitical interpretation of Wiki-
moldia, too.

6. Conclusion

In this paper, the curiosity of a Moldovan phantom page of the Roman-
ian Wikipedia has been treated in its technical functioning and poten-
tial use spotting the sociolinguistic background of the Moldovan lan-
guage and its controversial interpretation. The most striking element
of Moldovan, and thus Wikimoldia, is the use of the Cyrillic alphabet
according to the standard developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920s,
which provides Romanian with an orthography that is largely harmo-
nious with Russian, but phonographically particularly flat.

Since Wikimoldia is no longer online, we could dismiss as idle
thoughts the pronounced ideas about improving and elaborating the
project into a functioning encyclopaedia. In fact, the foundations that
have been laid remain available in the form of the PHP script slava37md2,
which could be used to reconstruct the site. However, because it has
not become clear whether and what political ideology was behind Wiki-
moldia, and also because of the aforementioned concerns about the theft
of data and ideas, the continuation and expansion of Wikimoldia should

<footnote n="13">13. Translation (with reference to Moldovan): created in the laboratories of Moscow.</footnote>
perhaps rather be avoided. Irrespective of this, the programming of Wikimoldia can serve as a lesson for other multialphabetic languages, such as Serbian and other Serbo-Croatian or BCMS varieties, or even Hindi and Urdu. Within the Romance language family, Jewish Spanish is particularly worthy of mention, because it is maintained in its own Wikipedia (https://lad.wikipedia.org/) in two languages with the Latin and Hebrew alphabets, where the inequality in the expansion of the encyclopaedia is immediately apparent: There are much fewer and mostly only shorter articles written in Hebrew. The option of an automatic transliteration could also be a helpful support in this context.

## References

Born, Joachim (2007). "Wikipedia. Darstellung und Chancen minoritärer romanischer Varietäten in einer virtuellen Enzyklopädie." In: *Sprachliche Diversität: Praktiken—Repräsentationen—Identitäten*. Ed. by Martin Doring, Dietmar Osthus, and Claudia Polzin-Haumann. Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, pp. 173–189.

Cimpoeșu, Dorin and Sergiu Musteață (2018). *Basarabia la un secol de la Marea Unire. O istorie politică a Republicii Moldova. 1991–2018*. Târgoviște: Cetatea de Scaun.

Coulmas, Florian (2018). *An Introduction to Multilingualism. Language in a Changing World*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dahmen, Wolfgang (2018). "Les frontières linguistiques extérieures du dacoroumain." In: *Manuel des frontières linguistiques dans la Romania*. Ed. by Christina Ossenkop and Otto Winkelmann. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 338–357.

Gabinskij, Mark A. (2002). "Moldawisch." In: *Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens*. Ed. by Miloš Okuka. Klagenfurt: Wieser, pp. 133–143.

Koch, Christian (forthcoming). "Wikimoldia – Викимолдия. Rekonstruktion eines Projekts zur Vitalisierung der moldauischen Sprache." In: *Korpus im Text* 10.

Kramer, Johannes (1989). "Rumänisch: Graphetik und Graphemik." In: *Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik*. Ed. by Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin, and Christian Schmitt. Vol. III. Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 14–18.

Leca-Tsiomis, Marie (2006). "Une tentative de conciliation entre ordre alphabétique et ordre encyclopédique." In: *Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie* 40.41, pp. 55–66.

Olariu, Florin-Teodor (2017). *Variație și varietăți în limba română. Studii de dialectologie și sociolingvistică*. Iași: Institutul European.

Onu, Liviu (1989). "Rumänisch: Langue et écriture." In: *Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik*. Ed. by Günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin, and Christian Schmitt. Vol. III. Tübingen: Niemeyer, pp. 305–324.
Zikmund, Hans (1996). "Transliteration." In: *Schrift und Schriftlichkeit. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch*. Ed. by Hartmut Günther and Herbert Ernst Wiegand. Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 1591–1604.
# The Role of Punctuation in Translation

Dana Awad · Ghassan Mourad · Marie-Rose Elamil

*Abstract.* The objective of this paper is to address the problem of translating punctuation marks: is it really possible to translate punctuation the same way we translate vocabulary? or is it only a transfer of the functional use of punctuation marks from a source language to a target language? In order to study the role of punctuation marks in translation theories and practice, we first attempt to identify the nature and function of punctuation from a traductological perspective. The second part of our paper is a French-Arabic corpus analysis of the translation of punctuation marks. Our corpus analysis is based on Amin Maalouf's book *Les identités meurtrières* and its translation into Arabic.

## Introduction

Punctuation marks have an important role in forming a logical sentence in order to communicate accurate meaning. Nevertheless, few studies highlight the importance of punctuation in the translation process. Previous research on the topic of punctuation in translation consist of contrastive linguistic analysis from a functional perspective and is targeted towards translation students. Those studies, though important, are descriptive, not based on a bilingual corpus analysis to support their findings and focus on the grammatical aspect of punctuation, hence discarding the cognitive nature of those marks.

In this paper, we suggest different methods to translate punctuation marks based on translation theories and we observe the translation of

Dana Awad
Lebanese University, al-Kantari, Moutran Shebli Str., Beirut, Lebanon
E-mail: dana.awad@ul.edu.lb

Ghassan Mourad
Lebanese University, al-Kantari, Moutran Shebli Str., Beirut, Lebanon
E-mail: ghasmrad@hotmail.fr

Marie-Rose Elamil
Lebanese University, rue principale Al Marej, Rmeich, Nabatieh, Lebanon
E-mail: marieroseami138@gmail.com

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*
Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 5.
Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 1083–1095. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-awad
ISBN: 978-2-9570549-7-8, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-9-2
punctuation by a professional translator based on a French-Arabic corpus of Amin Maalouf's *Les identités meurtrières* and its translation into Arabic. Our paper aims to highlight the important role of translating punctuation marks not only in sentence structure, but also in communicating the tacit meanings intended by the author.

## Related Works

Previous research on the importance of punctuation in translation either have a didactic approach centered towards translation students or a contrastive linguistic approach; we have failed to find a research paper that studies punctuation from a traductological perspective.

The didactic approach offers a method to train students to translate punctuation by relating it to the grammatical system of the source and target languages, and then to create benchmarks of the main differences. Spilka (1988) categorized those differences between French and English into the following:

- orthographic differences, such as the difference between English and French quotation marks;

- typographic differences, such as spaces before or after a punctuation mark;

- syntactic differences (Spilka gives the example of different French and English enumerations and adding punctuation between connectors, but this can also include differences in organizing independent and dependent clauses);

- textual differences<fnref n="1" />.

Another didactic approach study is written by Mogahed (2012). In his paper, Mogahed tries to show the importance of punctuation in keeping or changing the meaning of the source text by using examples of English-Arabic translations. For example, he points out how the meaning changes in the following sentence when a semicolon is used instead of a comma (Mogahed, 2012, p. 3):

> I have taken several science courses this year; my favorite was neuroscience.

> I have taken several science courses this year, but my favorite was neuroscience.

Mogahed explains that joining the two independent clauses with a comma and a conjunction (but)

<footnote n="1">1. By textual differences, Spilka refers to paragraph segmentation and the use of the typographic mark *alinea* to indicate a new paragraph. Although the topic of paragraph segmentation is, like punctuation, related to the organization and cohesion of ideas, we will focus in this paper on punctuation marks as linguistic signs.</footnote>
changes the meaning slightly from the previous version; it emphasizes the contrast between the group of courses in the first clause and the single course in the second clause. (ibid.)

Although these studies are important, their interest is specifically for translation students and the examples they use are not based on a corpus<fnref n="2" />. Nevertheless, those studies make an important point: punctuation marks, in translation teaching and practice, are sometimes unstated. The reason for this might be that they are considered universal, so even if the standard use of punctuation is not respected, the TL reader will be able to decipher the ST meaning. This is also because general rules of punctuation (at the syntactic level) are almost similar in all languages: a comma always coordinates words and dependent clauses; a semicolon always coordinates independent clauses, etc.

Research based on contrastive linguistics (Alqinai, 2013; Ponge, 2011) focus on the importance of linguistic analysis of punctuation and on comparing the relationship between punctuation and sentence structure in a source and a target language. When both language systems are very distinct, orthographic marks are also added, for example, Alqinai mentions the absence of capitalization in Arabic and how, when necessary, capitalization is translated into round brackets or quotation marks. Ponge (2010) bases her linguistic analysis of punctuation on Nina Catach's work, and although her work is about punctuation in translation, most of her research paper is about the nature of punctuation from a linguistic point of view. According to Ponge, who is inspired by N. Catach's work, punctuation is similar to ideograms that have an international connotation, which makes them “semantically stable” (Ponge, 2011, p. 124), and therefore, a creation of benchmarks for translators is easy.

Since contrastive linguistics is closely related to translation studies, such research work is important to highlight the relationship between punctuation and target text readability and organization of information. Although some translation techniques are mentioned, like back translation to insure that punctuation did not change the meaning in the source text, previous contrastive linguistics centered work on the subject fail to properly place punctuation within translation theories.

In our paper, we attempt to fill this aforementioned gap by attempting to integrate punctuation into existing translation theories, and we will demonstrate the role of punctuation in translation practice via a corpus analysis of Amin Maalouf's book *Les identités meurtrières* and its Arabic translation. Based on this analysis, we will see if the translation of punctuation is only functional<fnref n="3" />, due to syntactic differences between both languages, or if there is a semantic translation to punctuation.

<footnote n="2">2. The source of the examples is not mentioned in those studies.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. What we call functional translation is the translation process of grammatical entities that do not have a meaning, but a function like tenses and pronouns.</footnote>