Handshape

In sign languages, handshape, or dez, refers to the distinctive configurations that the hands take as they are used to form words.[1] In Stokoe terminology it is known as the DEZ, an abbreviation of designator. Handshape is one of five components of a sign, along with location (TAB), orientation (ORI), movement (SIG), and facial-body expression. Different sign languages make use of different handshapes.

In American Sign Language
A sign language interpreter at a presentation. The two handshapes are the flat (B) hand and the tapered (O or M) hand.
Main article: American Sign Language grammar

American Sign Language uses 18 handshapes for ordinary signs, plus a few marginal handshapes taken from the American Manual Alphabet for fingerspelling.[2]

Not all handshapes occur with every orientation, movement, or location: there are restrictions. For example, the 5 and F handshapes (the approximate shapes of the hand in fingerspelling 5 and F) only make contact with another part of the body through the tip of the thumb, whereas the K and 8 (a.k.a. Y) handshapes only make contact through the tip of the middle finger, and the X handshape only with the flexed joint of the index finger.

gollark: Protocol Π2-ψ being activated.Insert rhyme with activated after this:
gollark: Do not expose your bees to liberal thought. Bees know that the iron guide of the queen is good for the hive. But what happens if you make the bees socialist? What happens? They will overthrow the class system! They will say workers and soldiers are equal, even if it is not so! There will be hive anarchy everywhere! The bees will work for pleasure and not for the hive, which is very anarchistic! Socialism is bad for bees.
gollark: Wrong.
gollark: There are no rules to English spelling/pronounciationBecause English is composed of other languages from many a nation.
gollark: Alternatively, hack cultureAnd become a vulture™

See also
  • Classifier handshape

References
  1. Tennant and Brown; Richard A. Tennant; Marianne Gluszak Brown (1998). The American Sign Language handshape dictionary. Gallaudet University Press. pp. 407. ISBN 1-56368-043-2. Handshape.
  2. Stokoe, Casterline, & Croneberg, 1965. A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles, Gallaudet
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