The Mechanics of Fingerspelling: Analyzing Ethiopian Sign Language

Ethiopian Sign Language utilizes a fingerspelling system that represents Amharic orthography. Just as each character of the Amharic abugida encodes a consonant-vowel sound pair, each sign in the Ethiopian Sign Language fingerspelling system uses handshape to encode a base consonant, as well as a combination of timing, placement, and orientation to encode a paired vowel. This fingerspelling system is a productive polymorphemic method of naming the written characters of the Amharic language.