Uma proposta descritiva para a língua de sinais: da fonologia para a sigmanulogia

Abstract

Sign languages use the visual-motor-spatial modality, access to them occurs in the body and space articulatory production and they are captured in the visual field. Linguistics studies on sign languages adopt terms from theories designed for oral languages, such as Phonetics and Phonology. Both terms, in their origin, refer to sound, which is not consistent with sign languages. Thus, in this work, based on and developed from bibliographical analyses, we propose a discussion of terminological adequacy for the description of sign languages: Phonology is here called Sigmanulogy, compiling the works of Stokoe (1960), Battison (1973), Bellugi and Klima (1979) and Liddell and Johnson (1989), and it is divided into three systems: the articulatory, the spatial and the perceptual ones. Although studies concerning sign languages use the terms Phonetics and Phonology in an operational way, it should be considered that scientific work lacks terminological and descriptive precision, which happens in other sign language studies. We propose to start a discussion aiming to define a specific nomenclature followed by linguistic description appropriate to these languages modality.