Cherology

Cherology
Not to be confused with Cheironomy or musical gestures.

Cherology and chereme, sometimes chireme, (from Ancient Greek: χείρ "hand") are synonyms of phonology and phoneme previously used in the study of sign languages.

A chereme, as the basic unit of signed communication, is functionally and psychologically equivalent to the phonemes of oral languages, and has been replaced by that term in the academic literature. Cherology, as the study of cheremes in language, is thus equivalent to phonology.

The terms were coined in 1960 by William Stokoe at Gallaudet University as part of an attempt to describe sign languages as true and full languages, but that position is now universally accepted. The terminology has been widely discarded[1], except when the medial differences are important, since phonemes and cheremes (as well as graphemes) are perceived and processed differently in the brain.

References

  1. ^ Seegmiller, 2006. "Stokoe, William (1919–2000)", in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed.

See also

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