I have no specialty in signed language linguistics, but I would say that perhaps Location/Handshape/Movement could be considered similar to phonemes, or at leas

I have no specialty in signed language linguistics, but I would say that perhaps Location/Handshape/Movement could be considered similar to phonemes, or at least similar to subconcepts like 'place of articulation'. Similar to spoken languages, the individual sounds/shapes may or may not mean something on their own, but they tend to be regular enough to be able to be described in a writing system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokoe_notation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokoe_notation (note that Stokoe notation is described as a 'phonemic script' here).