Abstract
One of the basic sublexical units of a sign language sign is the handshape. In sign language lexicography, this parameter of the sign is often used for searching or ordering lexemes in the dictionary.
However, handshapes are not distributed arbitrarily; according to the theory of embodied cognitive phonology, they are able to encode and transmit meaning through a systematic mapping based on a person's physical, cultural and linguistic experience. Certain handshapes are systematically grouped together with similar semantic motivations, applying manual externalisation of visual, haptic and vehicular schemas, as well as metaphor and metonymy.
These facts will be demonstrated on the shape of hand 5 with outstretched and flexed fingers, the different parts of which represent different schemas. E.g., the fingers are profiled as individual elements of a unit; the bent palm as a convex surface; the gaps between the fingers as a non-compact mass; the hand as a human hand; the fingertips as touch, feeling, etc.
Thus, lexemes in electronic dictionaries could be grouped according to handshapes not only in respect of form but also in respect of semantics.