Meaning reconstruction strategies in french sign language from incomplete data in and out of context.
– Perspectives for the creation of sign language direct entry lexicon / dictionary. –
While the mind can isolate, in a relevant way, minimum production structures in sign language as meaningful elements, they must be performed simultaneously, to be activated in real life communication. Therefore a new paradigm can be defined claiming from iconicity, Gestalt and catastrophe theories. This theoretical framework leads us to identify and describe the strategies used by signers in their attempts to reconstruct meaning from truncated input data in and out of context. This work provides for new issues for reflection in the making of sign language dictionaries / lexicons. These tools should be built from the prägnanz of such primary and secondary morphemic subspaces but also from the dynamic weighting of constituting morphemic units. We should also underline the need for not limiting the elements in current dictionaries to single lexicalized signs but extending them to transfer structures.