Meaning categories

Some sign language dictionaries are organized by meaning categories. For example, they might have sections on food, animals, school, work, the body, etc. Sometimes people call these "semantic categories".

Right now SooSL does not have a good way to classify signs by meaning category. People have requested this feature. It is on our list of ways to improve SooSL. 

While you wait, there is another way to classify signs by meaning category. You can use the dialects feature in SooSL Desktop to do this. You could have a fake "dialect" called "food", another one called "animals", and so forth. This will work smoothly if you don't use the dialects feature to distinguish real dialects (who uses which sign). 

Now, you could even use the dialects feature for both purposes, but it might be confusing. You could have some dialect names that are real dialects (like places where signs are different) and other "dialect" names for meaning categories. You can assign a sign to more than one "dialect", so you could put each sign in a meaning category (or more than one) and also indicate who uses the sign. It will work, but as we said, it might be confusing for dictionary users. You can decide which is best.

In SooSL Web, look at the list of dialects to see if a dictionary is using the dialects feature to label meaning categories.

If you want us to add a better way to handle meaning categories, please contact us. We can't promise that we will be able to do it. Even so, if we know who wants this feature, we will make it a higher priority.

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