3.1.2. Proper nouns and name signs
In contrast to common nouns, proper nouns describe specific entities rather than classes of entities. Such nouns can be country names, names of unique objects such as planets or famous monuments, people’s names, or brand names. There are some proper noun examples below:
michael_jackson england
sun eiffel_tower
In the Deaf Culture, every deaf person has a name sign which is determined by the Deaf community and this name sign reflects a character trait or physical feature of that person. For instance, a name sign indicating eyes can be given to a person with big eyes or a name sign emphasizing joy or happiness can be given to a person who always smiles. For some toponyms (place names, such as countries and cities) TİD has its own indigenous signs. Some of these signs are in the native core lexicon [Lexicon – 1.1.] or they have a degree of non-nativeness. Below, some indigenous place signs in TİD are shown:
Indigenous place signs:
italy erzurum
izmir
Some of the non-native signs [Lexicon – 2] involve fingerspelling [Lexicon – 2.2.2] which is based on the Turkish orthography of the place name. Some other place names are borrowed from other sign languages.
Borrowed place signs:
amsterdam
berlin
Fingerspelled place name:
v a n
van
Many city name signs iconically represent the entities that the cities are known for [Lexicon - 1.1. & Pragmatics - 9.2.1.]. For instance, Antalya, a town in southern Turkey, is famous for its oranges and the name of the town has the same sign as the one used for the fruit, orange.
antalya (/ orange)
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant Agreement No 693349.