Depicting Signs

As a general rule, depicting signs do not have a sensible meaning which can be listed in a dictionary because their meaning is either too general or too narrow and context specific.

Depicting signs may be used to refer to the location, movement, displacement, size, shape or handling of an entity (Johnston, 2014).

Johnston, T. (2014) Auslan Corpus Annotation Guidelines. Retrieved from http://media.auslan.org.au/attachments/Johnston_AuslanCorpusAnnotationGuidelines_14June2014.pdf

SASS - Size and Shape Specifier
Outline an object’s shape and size. There are three types:

• Surface (eg: a flat hand describing a winding road)
• Depth and width (eg: two cupped hands showing the size of a tree-trunk)
• Perimeter-shape(eg: pointing fingers tracing an outline of an object's external shape)

Entity
Entity represents the location and movement of people, animals or objects. A vertical pointed index finger represents humans, a horizontal pointed index finger for animals and a flat hand shape for transport. Additional fingers may be extended to specify the number of entities. These hand shapes my show the path or manner of movement of the entity. Entity hand shapes can be used simultaneously to describe the relative locations and movements of two (or more) separate things.

Handling

Imitate the hands interacting with an object. There are three types:

• Holding (eg: holding a cup)
• Touch (eg: wiggling fingers typing)
• Instrumental (eg: fingers representing cutting with scissors)

Insights into Auslan. (2010). Retrieved from http://deafsocietynsw.org.au/documents/SignLanguage1Handouts.pdf.