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duced simultaneously in various combinations to form signs. 17 Stokoe identified three types of parameters designator or dez
(handshape), tabulation or tab (location), and signation or sig (motion).
Stokoe's analysis provided a system for describing sign language. The system enabled him to show that the component parts of signs "have the same order of priority and importance as the segmental phonemes of speech It also providedfor the first time in historya method by which sign language could be fully recorded.
Robbin Battison, the linguist who would later work with Stokoe at Gallaudet, explained Stokoe's careful process in arriving at this formulation:
Bill was forced to take a good hard look at how signs are made what parts of the body move or don't move, how the fingers bend or extend, how the hands contact the body, where they touch, the speed and repetition of movements . . . . In the end, he came up with a system that worked he had nineteen different basic symbols for handshapes, twelve different basic symbols for locations, and twenty-four different basic symbols for types of movements. In much the same way that the symbols o 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 allow us to express any number, Stokoe now had a system that would allow him to express any sign on paper.19
Stokoe had developed a system whereby, for example, the differences between the words mother, father, and fine could be shown although all three signs have the same handshape (dez), and the same movement (sig), their location (tab) on the signer's body is different. Just as soundsvowels and consonants along with differences in intonationare the elements of language received by the ear, so the shape of the hands, the placement of the hands, and the action of the hands are the elements that make the sign.
Stokoe observed that the elements are not combined arbitrarily. Rather, "in true linguistic fashion, the sign language allows for certain combinations of elements and not others. That is to say, the structure of morphemes in the system is not mathematical or mechanical but linguistic, and this level of or-

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