William Stokoe (pronounced
Stokie) is a
linguist who made the first
dictionary of
American Sign Language. He invented a written notation for sign language. Unlike
Sign Writing, it isn't iconic, but draws on the uses of handshapes in
fingerspelling. Thus '5' means the fingers spread, a flat hand is denoted by 'B', and '8' indicates that the thumb and middle finger are forward, maybe touching, while the others are spread. He also invented the words
dez,
sig, and
tab for kinds of chiremes, as
vowels and
consonants are kinds of
phonemes.
