American Sign Language grammar
Encyclopedia
The grammar of American Sign Language
(ASL) is the best studied of any sign language
, though research is still in its infancy, dating back only to William Stokoe
in the 1960s. Stokoe was the first linguist to approach any sign language as a full natural language with its own grammar, an approach which is now accepted practice for all Deaf sign languages. Stokoe's phonological model, for example, has been successfully applied to several other sign languages, such as British Sign Language
, which is not closely related to ASL.
of ASL, calling the building blocks of signs 'cheremes', from the Greek
cheir- 'hand', by analogy with the phoneme
s and tonemes of oral languages. However, it has since been recognized that these are cognitively equivalent, and linguists since Stokoe's time have used the terms 'phoneme' and 'phonology' for all languages, oral and sign. All of these linguists divided ASL signs into several phonemic features
: hand shape, palm orientation, hand movement, hand location, as well as non-manual features such as facial expression, posture, and mouthing
. In early theoretical approaches, movement was treated as simultaneous or sequential motions of the hand, on par with other features; while in many more recent approaches, movement is treated as the tempo of the language rather than as a feature per se: Signs are divided into segments
of movement and hold, each of which consists of a set of the other features of hand shape, orientation, location, and any non-manual features.
through facial expression and upper-body position. Part of a good "accent" is the use of a greater degree of emotive facial expression than an English speaker would use. If the sign for 'angry' is made without an angry expression, it will seem monotone, and normally taken as an indication of sarcasm. In addition, mouthing
(use of the lips, tongue, jaws, cheeks, and breath), the eyes, and movement of the head are used phonemically for lexical distinctions. For example, the sign translated 'not yet' requires that the tongue touch the lower lip and that the head rotate slowly from side to side, in addition to the manual part of the sign. Without these features it is ill formed, and may not be understood, or may look like the sign for 'late'. In addition, head movement, directed eye gaze, and eyebrow position are used for grammatical processes such as signaling referents, topics, questions, and negation. The use of similar facial changes such as eyebrow height to convey both prosody and grammatical distinctions is similar to the overlap of prosodic pitch and lexical or grammatical tone
in a tone language.
When both hands are actively used for motion (instead of the 'weak' hand acting as a passive location for the 'dominant' hand), their motions may be parallel (both to the left or right), mirror images (approaching or separating), or alternating (180° out of phase, like legs pedaling a bicycle).
Stokoe et al. (1965) described signs as a simultaneous, each segment of which is composed of one or more of the movement phonemes listed above, such as a fist moving outward while opening and then moving downward while closing again. Orientation was conflated with handshape into a feature called the designator or dez. However, since that time a variety of other approaches have refined that model. Orientation is now generally considered a feature in its own right, separate from handshape. Liddell (1982) divides signs into phonological sequences, which may be either movements or holds. Liddell likens this to the division of spoken language into consonants and vowels, with the Stokoe approach likened to the division of speech into syllables. For Liddell and those who follow him, each movement or hold consists of a set of the other features: Shape, orientation, location, and non-manual. A sign may consist of just a hold (that is, it may be without movement), or of movement plus a hold, or a hold plus movement, or more complex sequences. This simplifies the description of ASL morphology considerably.
s (not considering finger spelling and initialization) are:
These handshapes are constrained in their interactions. For example, the 5 and F handshapes usually make contact with another part of the body through the tip of the thumb, whereas the K and Y/8 handshapes usually only make contact through the tip of the middle finger, and the X handshape with the flexed joint of the index finger. The L hand usually makes contact by means of the thumb, though contact with the index finger would be just as easy: when contact is made with the index finger, the position of the thumb is unimportant, so the same signer may sometimes use a handshape closer to a letter G, and sometimes closer to a letter L; the G shape is considered more basic, and therefore these are considered allophones of the G hand.
It might be more accurate to call them "potential classifiers" since whether or not these "potential classifiers" become actual classifiers depends on how they are used in context.
In addition, the sign may be made in 'neutral' space in front of the chest (zero
location).
For example, a 5 hand tapping the forehead means 'father', a 5 hand tapping the chin means 'mother', and a 5 hand tapping the sternum (upper chest) means 'fine'.
Signs may be made with two active hands, oriented in a specific way both to each other and to the body locations.
points to its referent, or to a point in space (a 'locus') that has been designated to represent that referent. Directional (indexic) verbs [see below] are similar. However, no words are distinguished by such divisions of signing space.
A referent locus may be set up by signing a noun and then pointing to a certain spot in sign space. The signer can later refer back to that noun by pointing to its associated location (that is, by using an indexic pronoun), or by incorporating the location into the motion of an indexic verb. For instance, if the signer points to a spot over their right shoulder when referring to their grandmother in another city, they can then mention her again by pointing over their shoulder instead of repeating 'my out-of-town grandmother'. Perhaps as many as eight loci may be productively used to distinguish pronouns in a conversation, before the speakers become overloaded, whereas English is restricted to three third-person pronouns: he, she, and they.
Nouns can be set up without the need for initially pointing by making a sign for them at a salient point in space near the signer. This is often accompanied by the facial expression that indicates a topic. (See below.) For example, when discussing football, a signer can sign 'college' on their left (most likely by signing 'college' in neutral space and extending the final hold to the locus being set up), fingerspell P-R-O at a locus on their right (that is, off to one side rather than in neutral space), and then ask whether the addressee prefers collegiate or professional games by signing 'you like which?', with the indexic pronoun 'which' oscillating between the two loci.
is to a large extent iconic
. This shows up especially well in reduplication
and indexicality.
While many spoken languages have both inflection
al and derivational
morphology, ASL appears to have only derivational morphology (Liddell 2004). There are no inflections for tense, number, or person. Person is indicated indexically with some verbs, but the form this takes is specific to each verb, and cannot be arbitrarily extended to new verbs the way verbal inflections can. A similar situation exists with verbal number.
(making what appear to be speech sounds) is important for fluent signing, and it has morphological uses. For example, one may sign 'man tall' to indicate the man is tall, but by mouthing the syllable cha while signing 'tall', the phrase becomes that man is enormous!
There are other ways of modifying a verb or adjective to make it more intense. These are all more or less equivalent to adding the word "very" in English; which morphology is used depends on the word being modified. Certain words which are short in English, such as 'sad' and 'mad', are fingerspelled rather than signed to mean 'very sad' and 'very mad'. Others are reduplicated. Some signs are produced with an exaggeratedly large motion, so that they take up more sign space than normal. This may involve a back-and-forth scissoring motion of the arms to indicate that the sign ought to be yet larger, but that one is physically incapable of making it big enough. Many other signs are given a slow, tense production. The fact that this modulation is morphological rather than merely mimetic
can be seen in the sign for 'fast': both 'very slow' and 'very fast' are signed by making the motion slower and more deliberate than it is in the citation forms of 'slow' and 'fast', not by making it slower for 'very slow' and faster for 'very fast'.
(morphological repetition) is extremely common in ASL. Generally the motion of the sign is shortened as well as repeated. Nouns may be derived from verbs through reduplication. For example, the noun chair is formed from the verb to sit by repeating it with a reduced degree of motion. Similar relationships exist between acquisition and to get, airplane and to fly (on an airplane), also window and to open/close a window.
Reduplication is commonly used to express intensity as well as several verbal aspects (see below). It is also used to derive signs such as 'every two weeks' from 'two weeks', and is used for verbal number (see below), where the reduplication is iconic for the repetitive meaning of the sign.
than a compound. Typically only the final hold (see above) remains from the first element, and any reduplication is lost from the second.
An example is the verb AGREE, which derives from the two signs THINK and ALIKE. The verb THINK is signed by bringing a 1 hand inward and touching the forehead (a move and a hold). ALIKE is signed by holding two 1 hands parallel, pointing outward, and bringing them together two or three times. The compound/blend AGREE starts as THINK ends: with the index finger touching the forehead (the final hold of that sign). In addition, the weak hand is already in place, in anticipation of the next part of the sign. Then the hand at the forehead is brought down parallel to the weak hand; it approaches but does not make actual contact, and there is no repetition.
es are extremely common in spoken languages, which except for suprasegmental features such as tone are tightly constrained by the sequential nature of voice sounds. In ASL, however, morphemes may be expressed simultaneously, and perhaps consequently there are only a few affixes.
One of these, transcribed as '-er', is made by placing two B or 5 hands in front of the torso, palms facing each other, and lowering them. On its own this sign means 'person'; in a compound sign following a verb, it is a suffix for the performer of the action, as in 'drive-er' and 'teach-er'. However, it cannot generally be used to translate English '-er', as it is used with a much more limited set of verbs.
An ASL prefix, (touching the chin), is used with number signs to indicate 'years old'. The prefix completely assimilates
with the initial handshape of the number. For instance, 'fourteen' is signed with a B hand that bends several times at the knuckles. The chin-touch prefix in 'fourteen years old' is thus also made with a B hand. For 'three years old', however, the prefix is made with a 3 hand.
ASL also has a system of classifier
s which may be incorporated into signs. A fist may represent an inactive object such as a rock (this is the default or neutral classifier), a horizontal ILY hand may represent an aircraft, a horizontal 3 hand (thumb pointing up and slightly forward) a motor vehicle, an upright G hand a person on foot, an upright V hand a pair of people on foot, and so on through higher numbers of people. These classifiers are moved through sign space to iconically represent the actions of their referents. For example, a ILY hand may 'lift off' or 'land on' a horizontal B hand to sign an aircraft taking off or landing; a 3 hand may be brought down on a B hand to sign parking a car; and a G hand may be brought toward a V hand to represent one person approaching two.
One, the WEEKLY frame, consists of a simple downward movement. It combines with the signs for the days of the week, which then lose their inherent movement. For example, 'Monday' consists of an M/O hand made with a circling movement. 'MondayWEEKLY' (that is, 'on Mondays') is therefore signed as an M/O hand that drops downward, but without the circling movement. A similar DAILY frame (a sideward pan) combines with times of the day, such as 'morning' and 'afternoon', which likewise keep their handshape and location but lose their original movement. Numeral incorporation (see above) also uses frames. However, in ASL frames are most productively utilized for verbal aspect.
in ASL, there are numerous verbal aspects. These are produced by modulating the verb: Through reduplication, by placing the verb in an aspectual frame (see above), or with a combination of these means.
An example of an aspectual frame is the unrealized inceptive aspect ('just about to X'), illustrated here with the verb 'to tell'. 'To tell' is an indexical (directional) verb, where the index finger (a G hand) begins with a touch to the chin and then moves outward to point out the recipient of the telling. 'To be just about to tell' retains just the locus and the initial chin touch, which now becomes the final hold of the sign; all other features from the basic verb (in this case, the outward motion and pointing) are dropped and replaced by features from the frame (which are shared with the unrealized inceptive aspects of other verbs such as 'look at', 'wash the dishes', 'yell', 'flirt', etc.). These frame features are: Eye gaze toward the locus (which is no longer pointed at with the hand), an open jaw, and a hand (or hands, in the case of two-hand verbs) in front of the trunk which moves in an arc to the onset location of the basic verb (in this case, touching the chin), while the trunk rotates and the signer inhales, catching her breath during the final hold. The hand shape throughout the sign is whichever is required by the final hold, in this case a G hand.
The variety of aspects in ASL can be illustrated by the verb 'to be sick', which involves the middle finger of the Y/8 hand touching the forehead, and which can be modified by a large number of frames. Several of these involve reduplication, which may but need not be analyzed as part of the frame. (The appropriate non-manual features are not described here.)
These modulations readily combine with each other to create yet finer distinctions. Not all verbs take all aspects, and the forms they do take will not necessarily be completely analogous to the verb illustrated here. Conversely, not all aspects are possible with this one verb.
Aspect is unusual in ASL in that transitive verb
s derived for aspect lose their transitivity. That is, while you can sign 'dog chew bone' for the dog chewed on a bone, or 'she look-at me' for she looked at me, you cannot do the same in the durative to mean the dog gnawed on the bone or she stared at me. Instead, you must use other strategies, such as a topic construction (see below) to avoid having an object for the verb.
is primarily conveyed through a combination of word order and non-manual features. Early accounts of word order, among other issues, were often confused because non-manual features were not considered.
s in ASL is subject–verb–object (Mastering ASL). However, the subject, object, or both may be expressed as a topic and then omitted from the clauses and sentences that follow, as ASL is a pro-drop language. The full sentence structure in ASL is [topic] [subject] verb [object] [subject-pronoun-tag]. Topics and tags are both indicated with non-manual features, and both give a great deal of flexibility to ASL word order. Within a noun phrase
, the word order is noun-number and noun-adjective.
ASL does not have a copula (linking 'to be' verb). For example, my hair is wet is signed 'my hair wet', and my name is Pete may be signed '[name my]TOPIC P-E-T-E'.
In ASL, the eyebrows are raised during the production of a topic, and often a slight pause follows:
ASL utterances do not require topics, but their use is extremely common. They are used for purposes of information flow
, to set up referent loci (see above), and to supply objects for verbs which are grammatically prevented from taking objects themselves (see below).
Without a topic, the dog chased my cat is signed:
However, people tend to want to set up the object of their concern first and then discuss what happened to it. In English, we do this with passive
clauses: my cat was chased by the dog. In ASL, topics are used with similar effect:
If the word order of the main clause is changed, the meaning of the utterance also changes:
versus
The subject need not be mentioned, as in
versus
Of these two strategies, the first is the more common. For my friend was typing her term paper all night to be used with a durative aspect, this would result in
The less colloquial topic construction may come out as,
clauses may be signaled by shaking the head during the entire clause. A topic, however, cannot be so negated; the headshake can only be produced during the production of the main clause. (A second type of negation starts with the verb and continues to the end of the clause.)
In addition, in many communities, negation is put at the end of the clause, unless there is a wh- question word. For example, the sentence, "I thought the movie was not good," could be signed as, "BEFORE MOVIE ME SEE, THINK WHAT? IT GOOD NOT."
There are two manual signs that negate a sentence, NOT and NONE, which are accompanied by a shake of the head. NONE is typically used when talking about possession:
NOT negates a verb:
require a lowering of the eyebrows. In both, the questioner leans forward slightly and extends the duration of the last sign. Yes-no questions do not involve a change of word order. In wh- questions, the question word comes at the end, unlike in English where it is the first word in the question.
Raised eyebrows are also used for rhetorical question
s which are not intended to elicit an answer, for the same reason that general topic–comment structures have raised eyebrows on the topic portion. Rhetorical questions are much more common in ASL than in English. For example, I don't like garlic may be signed,
This strategy is commonly used instead of signing the word 'because' for clarity or emphasis. For instance, I love to eat pasta because I am Italian would be signed,
s are signaled by tilting back the head and raising the eyebrows and upper lip. This is done during the performance of the entire clause. There is no change in word order. For example, the dog which recently chased the cat came home would be signed,
where the brackets here indicate the duration of the non-manual features. If the sign 'recently' were made without these features, it would lie outside the relative clause, and the meaning would change to "the dog which chased the cat recently came home".
, an extended 'B' handshape with an outward palm orientation is a possessive pronoun
, and an extended-thumb 'A' handshape is a reflexive pronoun
; these may be combined with numeral signs to sign 'you two', 'us three', 'all of them', etc.
If the referent is not physically present, the speaker identifies the referent and then points to a location (the locus) in the sign space near their body. This locus can then be pointed at to refer to the referent. Theoretically, any number of loci my be set up, as long as the signer and recipient remember them all, but in practice, no more than eight loci are used.
Meier 1990 demonstrates that only two grammatical person
s are distinguished in ASL: First person and non-first person, as in Damin
. Both persons come in several numbers as well as with signs such as 'my' and 'by myself'.
Meier provides several arguments for believing that ASL does not formally distinguish second from third person. For example, when pointing to a person that is physically present, a pronoun is equivalent to either 'you' or '(s)he' depending on the discourse. There is nothing in the sign itself, nor in the direction of eye gaze or body posture, that can be relied on to make this distinction. That is, the same formal sign can refer to any of several second or third persons, which the indexic nature of the pronoun makes clear. In English, indexic uses also occur, as in 'I need you to go to the store and you to stay here', but not so ubiquitously. In contrast,several first person ASL pronouns, such as the plural possessive ('our'), look different from their non-first person equivalents, and a couple of pronouns do not occur in the first person at all, so first and non-first persons are formally distinct.
Personal pronouns have separate forms for singular ('I' and 'you/(s)he') and plural ('we' and 'you/they'). These have possessive
counterparts: 'my', 'our', 'your/his/her', 'your/their'. In addition, there are pronoun forms which incorporate numerals from two to five ('the three of us', 'the four of you/them', etc.), though the dual
pronouns are slightly idiosyncratic in form (i.e., they have a K rather than 2 handshape, and the wrist nods rather than circles). These numeral-incorporated pronouns have no possessive equivalents.
Also among the personal pronouns are the 'self' forms ('by myself', 'by your/themselves', etc.). These only occur in the singular and plural (there is no numeral incorporation), and are only found as subjects. They have derived emphatic and 'characterizing' forms, with modifications used for derivation rather like those for verbal aspect. The 'characterizing' pronoun is used when describing someone who has just been mentioned. It only occurs as a non-first person singular form.
Finally there are formal pronouns used for honored guests. These occur as singular and plural in the non-first person, but only as singular in the first person.
ASL is a pro-drop language, which means that pronouns are not used when the referent is obvious from context and is not being emphasized.
Adverbs, however, occur before the verbs. Most of the time adverbs are simply the same sign as an adjective, distinguished by the context of the sentence.
When the scope of the adverb is the entire clause, as in the case of time, it comes before the topic. This is the only thing which can appear before the topic in ASL: time–topic–comment.
Modal verb
s come after the main verb of the clause:
There is a manual sign for the conjunction or, but the concept is usually signed nonmanually with a slight shoulder twist.
The manual sign for the conjunction but is similar to the sign for different. It is more likely to be used in Signed Exact English than in ASL. Instead, shoulder shifts can be used, similar to "or" with appropriate facial expression.
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
(ASL) is the best studied of any sign language
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
, though research is still in its infancy, dating back only to William Stokoe
William Stokoe
William C. Stokoe, Jr. was a scholar who researched American Sign Language extensively while he worked at Gallaudet University. He coined the term cherology, the equivalent of phonology for sign language .Stokoe graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY in 1941, and in...
in the 1960s. Stokoe was the first linguist to approach any sign language as a full natural language with its own grammar, an approach which is now accepted practice for all Deaf sign languages. Stokoe's phonological model, for example, has been successfully applied to several other sign languages, such as British Sign Language
British Sign Language
British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of some deaf people in the UK; there are 125,000 deaf adults in the UK who use BSL plus an estimated 20,000 children. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands,...
, which is not closely related to ASL.
Phonology
Stokoe concentrated primarily on establishing the phonologyPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of ASL, calling the building blocks of signs 'cheremes', from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
cheir- 'hand', by analogy with the phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s and tonemes of oral languages. However, it has since been recognized that these are cognitively equivalent, and linguists since Stokoe's time have used the terms 'phoneme' and 'phonology' for all languages, oral and sign. All of these linguists divided ASL signs into several phonemic features
Feature (linguistics)
A feature is a concept applied to several fields of linguistics, typically involving the assignment of binary or unary conditions which act as constraints.-In phonology:...
: hand shape, palm orientation, hand movement, hand location, as well as non-manual features such as facial expression, posture, and mouthing
Mouthing
In sign language, mouthing is the production of visual syllables with the mouth while signing. Although not present in all sign languages, and sometimes not in signers at all levels of education, where it does occur it may be an essential element of a sign, distinguishing signs which would...
. In early theoretical approaches, movement was treated as simultaneous or sequential motions of the hand, on par with other features; while in many more recent approaches, movement is treated as the tempo of the language rather than as a feature per se: Signs are divided into segments
Segment (linguistics)
In linguistics , the term segment may be defined as "any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech."- Classifying speech units :...
of movement and hold, each of which consists of a set of the other features of hand shape, orientation, location, and any non-manual features.
Non-manual phonemes and prosody
ASL conveys prosodyProsody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
through facial expression and upper-body position. Part of a good "accent" is the use of a greater degree of emotive facial expression than an English speaker would use. If the sign for 'angry' is made without an angry expression, it will seem monotone, and normally taken as an indication of sarcasm. In addition, mouthing
Mouthing
In sign language, mouthing is the production of visual syllables with the mouth while signing. Although not present in all sign languages, and sometimes not in signers at all levels of education, where it does occur it may be an essential element of a sign, distinguishing signs which would...
(use of the lips, tongue, jaws, cheeks, and breath), the eyes, and movement of the head are used phonemically for lexical distinctions. For example, the sign translated 'not yet' requires that the tongue touch the lower lip and that the head rotate slowly from side to side, in addition to the manual part of the sign. Without these features it is ill formed, and may not be understood, or may look like the sign for 'late'. In addition, head movement, directed eye gaze, and eyebrow position are used for grammatical processes such as signaling referents, topics, questions, and negation. The use of similar facial changes such as eyebrow height to convey both prosody and grammatical distinctions is similar to the overlap of prosodic pitch and lexical or grammatical tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
in a tone language.
Hand orientation, movement, and hold
Phonologically distinctive sign movements include linear, internal, and complex movements. The six fundamental directions of linear movement are up, down, in (toward the signer), out (away from the signer), contralateral (toward the center or the opposite hand), and ipsilateral (outward toward the side of the signing hand). Diagonal movement is considered to be composed of those fundamental directions. Internal movements include twisting of the wrist, bending of the wrist or fingers, opening the hand, closing the hand, and wriggling the fingers. Complex movements include touching a location, crossing hands or fingers, grasping, entering (inserting the hand or fingers between the fingers of the other hand), approaching a location (or the hands to each other), separating from a location (or the hands from each other), brushing a location, exchanging hands, and circling motion of the hand or arm. These movements may involve 'salient' forearms, so that crossing the hands is realized as crossing extended arms.When both hands are actively used for motion (instead of the 'weak' hand acting as a passive location for the 'dominant' hand), their motions may be parallel (both to the left or right), mirror images (approaching or separating), or alternating (180° out of phase, like legs pedaling a bicycle).
Stokoe et al. (1965) described signs as a simultaneous, each segment of which is composed of one or more of the movement phonemes listed above, such as a fist moving outward while opening and then moving downward while closing again. Orientation was conflated with handshape into a feature called the designator or dez. However, since that time a variety of other approaches have refined that model. Orientation is now generally considered a feature in its own right, separate from handshape. Liddell (1982) divides signs into phonological sequences, which may be either movements or holds. Liddell likens this to the division of spoken language into consonants and vowels, with the Stokoe approach likened to the division of speech into syllables. For Liddell and those who follow him, each movement or hold consists of a set of the other features: Shape, orientation, location, and non-manual. A sign may consist of just a hold (that is, it may be without movement), or of movement plus a hold, or a hold plus movement, or more complex sequences. This simplifies the description of ASL morphology considerably.
Handshape
While it can be approximated that there are around 150 handshapes, not all are phonemically distinct in ASL. This is very similar to how there are hundreds of linguistically producible sounds, but only some are considered phonemically distinct in English. Phonemically distinct ASL handshapeHandshape
Handshape refers to specific shapes formed with that hand that are used in signed languages and manual communication methods such as American Sign Language, other international signed languages such as Signed Exact English, Australian Sign Language and cued speech among others.-Handshapes in...
s (not considering finger spelling and initialization) are:
- fist with thumb on side (the shape of the ASL lettersAmerican Sign Language alphabetThe American Manual Alphabet is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language when spelling individual letters of a word is the preferred or only option, such as with proper names or the titles of works...
A, or 10), - fist with thumb on front (S),
- fist with thumb between index and middle finger (T)
- flat hand with fingers together (B),
- flat hand with fingers apart (4),
- spread (and sometimes clawed) hand (5 or E),
- cupped hand (C),
- thumb touching fingertips (O),
- pointing index finger with fist hand (1 or Z),
- pointing index finger with lotus hand (D),
- hooked index finger (X),
- pointing pinky finger (I or J),
- index and middle fingers together (U or H),
- index and middle fingers apart (V or 2),
- 'chopsticks' hand (K or P),
- thumb and index finger apart (L),
- thumb, index, and middle finger extended (3),
- thumb touching pinky (6 or W),
- thumb touching index finger, other fingers extended (F or 9),
- crossed fingers (R),
- fist with pinky and thumb extended (Y),
- flat hand with middle finger bent (open 8),
- fist with pinky and index finger extended (horns),
- fist with pinky, index, and thumb extended (ILY), and
- fist with bent index and middle finger extended (snake classifier).
These handshapes are constrained in their interactions. For example, the 5 and F handshapes usually make contact with another part of the body through the tip of the thumb, whereas the K and Y/8 handshapes usually only make contact through the tip of the middle finger, and the X handshape with the flexed joint of the index finger. The L hand usually makes contact by means of the thumb, though contact with the index finger would be just as easy: when contact is made with the index finger, the position of the thumb is unimportant, so the same signer may sometimes use a handshape closer to a letter G, and sometimes closer to a letter L; the G shape is considered more basic, and therefore these are considered allophones of the G hand.
Classifiers
The movement or shape of certain signs can be modified in such a way as to include information about a referent's type, size, shape, movement, or extent. Those signs which have this ability are "classifiers."It might be more accurate to call them "potential classifiers" since whether or not these "potential classifiers" become actual classifiers depends on how they are used in context.
Location
Of all the possible locations on the body or in space, twelve are used to distinguish signs in ASL:- the whole face or head,
- the upper face (forehead or brow),
- the mid face (eyes or nose),
- the lower face (chin or mouth),
- the side face (cheek, temple, or ear),
- the neck,
- the trunk (shoulders, chest, and belly),
- the upper arm,
- the forearm (including the elbow),
- the inside of the wrist,
- the back of the wrist, and
- the other (weak) hand: In this case, the weak hand may take one of the simpler handshapes listed above, such as the A, O, B, G, H, V, or L handshapes, but not others such as X or R.
In addition, the sign may be made in 'neutral' space in front of the chest (zero
Zero (linguistics)
A zero, in linguistics, is a constituent needed in an analysis but not realized in speech. This implies that there is a lack of an element where a theory would expect one. It is usually written with the symbol "", in Unicode .There are several kind of zeros....
location).
For example, a 5 hand tapping the forehead means 'father', a 5 hand tapping the chin means 'mother', and a 5 hand tapping the sternum (upper chest) means 'fine'.
Signs may be made with two active hands, oriented in a specific way both to each other and to the body locations.
Referent locus system
In addition to phonological location, there is also indexic location. For example, the 2nd/3rd-person pronounPronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
points to its referent, or to a point in space (a 'locus') that has been designated to represent that referent. Directional (indexic) verbs [see below] are similar. However, no words are distinguished by such divisions of signing space.
A referent locus may be set up by signing a noun and then pointing to a certain spot in sign space. The signer can later refer back to that noun by pointing to its associated location (that is, by using an indexic pronoun), or by incorporating the location into the motion of an indexic verb. For instance, if the signer points to a spot over their right shoulder when referring to their grandmother in another city, they can then mention her again by pointing over their shoulder instead of repeating 'my out-of-town grandmother'. Perhaps as many as eight loci may be productively used to distinguish pronouns in a conversation, before the speakers become overloaded, whereas English is restricted to three third-person pronouns: he, she, and they.
Nouns can be set up without the need for initially pointing by making a sign for them at a salient point in space near the signer. This is often accompanied by the facial expression that indicates a topic. (See below.) For example, when discussing football, a signer can sign 'college' on their left (most likely by signing 'college' in neutral space and extending the final hold to the locus being set up), fingerspell P-R-O at a locus on their right (that is, off to one side rather than in neutral space), and then ask whether the addressee prefers collegiate or professional games by signing 'you like which?', with the indexic pronoun 'which' oscillating between the two loci.
Morphology
ASL morphologyMorphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
is to a large extent iconic
Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
. This shows up especially well in reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
and indexicality.
While many spoken languages have both inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
al and derivational
Derivation (linguistics)
In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
morphology, ASL appears to have only derivational morphology (Liddell 2004). There are no inflections for tense, number, or person. Person is indicated indexically with some verbs, but the form this takes is specific to each verb, and cannot be arbitrarily extended to new verbs the way verbal inflections can. A similar situation exists with verbal number.
Degree
MouthingMouthing
In sign language, mouthing is the production of visual syllables with the mouth while signing. Although not present in all sign languages, and sometimes not in signers at all levels of education, where it does occur it may be an essential element of a sign, distinguishing signs which would...
(making what appear to be speech sounds) is important for fluent signing, and it has morphological uses. For example, one may sign 'man tall' to indicate the man is tall, but by mouthing the syllable cha while signing 'tall', the phrase becomes that man is enormous!
There are other ways of modifying a verb or adjective to make it more intense. These are all more or less equivalent to adding the word "very" in English; which morphology is used depends on the word being modified. Certain words which are short in English, such as 'sad' and 'mad', are fingerspelled rather than signed to mean 'very sad' and 'very mad'. Others are reduplicated. Some signs are produced with an exaggeratedly large motion, so that they take up more sign space than normal. This may involve a back-and-forth scissoring motion of the arms to indicate that the sign ought to be yet larger, but that one is physically incapable of making it big enough. Many other signs are given a slow, tense production. The fact that this modulation is morphological rather than merely mimetic
Mimesis
Mimesis , from μιμεῖσθαι , "to imitate," from μῖμος , "imitator, actor") is a critical and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the...
can be seen in the sign for 'fast': both 'very slow' and 'very fast' are signed by making the motion slower and more deliberate than it is in the citation forms of 'slow' and 'fast', not by making it slower for 'very slow' and faster for 'very fast'.
Reduplication
ReduplicationReduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
(morphological repetition) is extremely common in ASL. Generally the motion of the sign is shortened as well as repeated. Nouns may be derived from verbs through reduplication. For example, the noun chair is formed from the verb to sit by repeating it with a reduced degree of motion. Similar relationships exist between acquisition and to get, airplane and to fly (on an airplane), also window and to open/close a window.
Reduplication is commonly used to express intensity as well as several verbal aspects (see below). It is also used to derive signs such as 'every two weeks' from 'two weeks', and is used for verbal number (see below), where the reduplication is iconic for the repetitive meaning of the sign.
Compounds
Many ASL words are historically compounds. However, the two elements of these signs have fused, with features being lost from one or both, to create what might be better called a blendBlend
In linguistics, a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.-Linguistics:...
than a compound. Typically only the final hold (see above) remains from the first element, and any reduplication is lost from the second.
An example is the verb AGREE, which derives from the two signs THINK and ALIKE. The verb THINK is signed by bringing a 1 hand inward and touching the forehead (a move and a hold). ALIKE is signed by holding two 1 hands parallel, pointing outward, and bringing them together two or three times. The compound/blend AGREE starts as THINK ends: with the index finger touching the forehead (the final hold of that sign). In addition, the weak hand is already in place, in anticipation of the next part of the sign. Then the hand at the forehead is brought down parallel to the weak hand; it approaches but does not make actual contact, and there is no repetition.
Affixes
AffixAffix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
es are extremely common in spoken languages, which except for suprasegmental features such as tone are tightly constrained by the sequential nature of voice sounds. In ASL, however, morphemes may be expressed simultaneously, and perhaps consequently there are only a few affixes.
One of these, transcribed as '-er', is made by placing two B or 5 hands in front of the torso, palms facing each other, and lowering them. On its own this sign means 'person'; in a compound sign following a verb, it is a suffix for the performer of the action, as in 'drive-er' and 'teach-er'. However, it cannot generally be used to translate English '-er', as it is used with a much more limited set of verbs.
An ASL prefix, (touching the chin), is used with number signs to indicate 'years old'. The prefix completely assimilates
Assimilation (linguistics)
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...
with the initial handshape of the number. For instance, 'fourteen' is signed with a B hand that bends several times at the knuckles. The chin-touch prefix in 'fourteen years old' is thus also made with a B hand. For 'three years old', however, the prefix is made with a 3 hand.
Numeral incorporation and classifiers
Rather than relying on sequential affixes, ASL makes heavy use of simultaneous modification of signs. One example of this is found in the aspectual system (see below); another is numeral incorporation: There are several families of two-handed signs which require one of the hands to take the handshape of a numeral. Many of these deal with time. For example, drawing the dominant hand lengthwise across the palm and fingers of a flat B hand indicates a number of weeks; the dominant hand takes the form of a numeral from one to nine to specify how many weeks. There are analogous signs for 'weeks ago' and 'weeks from now', etc., though in practice several of these signs are only found with the lower numerals.ASL also has a system of classifier
Classifier
Classifier may refer to:*Classifier *Classifier *Classifier *Hierarchical classifier*Linear classifier...
s which may be incorporated into signs. A fist may represent an inactive object such as a rock (this is the default or neutral classifier), a horizontal ILY hand may represent an aircraft, a horizontal 3 hand (thumb pointing up and slightly forward) a motor vehicle, an upright G hand a person on foot, an upright V hand a pair of people on foot, and so on through higher numbers of people. These classifiers are moved through sign space to iconically represent the actions of their referents. For example, a ILY hand may 'lift off' or 'land on' a horizontal B hand to sign an aircraft taking off or landing; a 3 hand may be brought down on a B hand to sign parking a car; and a G hand may be brought toward a V hand to represent one person approaching two.
Frames
Frames are a morphological device that may be unique to sign languages (Liddell 2004). They are incomplete sets of the features which make up signs, and they combine with existing signs, absorbing features from them to form a derived sign. It is the frame which specifies the number and nature of segments in the resulting sign, while the basic signs it combines with lose all but one or two of their original features.One, the WEEKLY frame, consists of a simple downward movement. It combines with the signs for the days of the week, which then lose their inherent movement. For example, 'Monday' consists of an M/O hand made with a circling movement. 'MondayWEEKLY' (that is, 'on Mondays') is therefore signed as an M/O hand that drops downward, but without the circling movement. A similar DAILY frame (a sideward pan) combines with times of the day, such as 'morning' and 'afternoon', which likewise keep their handshape and location but lose their original movement. Numeral incorporation (see above) also uses frames. However, in ASL frames are most productively utilized for verbal aspect.
Verbal aspect
While there is no grammatical tenseGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
in ASL, there are numerous verbal aspects. These are produced by modulating the verb: Through reduplication, by placing the verb in an aspectual frame (see above), or with a combination of these means.
An example of an aspectual frame is the unrealized inceptive aspect ('just about to X'), illustrated here with the verb 'to tell'. 'To tell' is an indexical (directional) verb, where the index finger (a G hand) begins with a touch to the chin and then moves outward to point out the recipient of the telling. 'To be just about to tell' retains just the locus and the initial chin touch, which now becomes the final hold of the sign; all other features from the basic verb (in this case, the outward motion and pointing) are dropped and replaced by features from the frame (which are shared with the unrealized inceptive aspects of other verbs such as 'look at', 'wash the dishes', 'yell', 'flirt', etc.). These frame features are: Eye gaze toward the locus (which is no longer pointed at with the hand), an open jaw, and a hand (or hands, in the case of two-hand verbs) in front of the trunk which moves in an arc to the onset location of the basic verb (in this case, touching the chin), while the trunk rotates and the signer inhales, catching her breath during the final hold. The hand shape throughout the sign is whichever is required by the final hold, in this case a G hand.
The variety of aspects in ASL can be illustrated by the verb 'to be sick', which involves the middle finger of the Y/8 hand touching the forehead, and which can be modified by a large number of frames. Several of these involve reduplication, which may but need not be analyzed as part of the frame. (The appropriate non-manual features are not described here.)
- stative "to be sick" is made with simple iterated contact, typically with around four iterations. This is the basic, citation formCitation formIn linguistics the citation form of a word can mean:* its canonical form or lemma: the form of an inflected word given in dictionaries or glossaries, thus also called the dictionary form....
of the verb. - inchoativeInchoativeInchoative aspect is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of an action or state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian, and also in Finnic languages. It should not be confused with the prospective, which denotes actions that are about to...
"to get sick, to take sick" is made with a single straight movement to contact and a hold of the finger on the forehead. - predisposional "to be sickly, to be prone to get sick" is made with incomplete motion: three even circular cycles without contact. This aspect adds reduplication to verbs such as 'to look at' which do not already contain repetition.
- susceptative "to get sick easily" is made with a thrusting motion: The onset is held; then there is a brief, tense thrust that is checked before actual contact can be made.
- frequentative "to be often sick" is given a marcatoMarcatoMarcato is a musical instruction indicating a note, chord, or passage is to be played louder or more forcefully than surrounding music. The instruction may involve the word marcato itself written above or below the staff or it may take the form of an accent mark, ^ , an open vertical wedge...
articulation: A regular beat, with 4-6 iterations, and marked onsets and holds. - susceptive and frequentive may be combined to mean "to get sick easily and often": Four brief thrusts on a marked, steady beat, without contact with the forehead.
- protractive "to be continuously sick" is made with a long, tense hold and no movement at all.
- incessant "to get sick incessantly" has a reduplicated tremoloTremoloTremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
articulation: A dozen tiny, tense, uneven iterations, as rapid as possible and without contact. - durative "to be sick for a long time" is made with a reduplicated ellipticalEllipseIn geometry, an ellipse is a plane curve that results from the intersection of a cone by a plane in a way that produces a closed curve. Circles are special cases of ellipses, obtained when the cutting plane is orthogonal to the cone's axis...
motion: Three slow, uneven cycles, with a heavy downward brush of the forehead and an arching return. - iterative "to get sick over and over again" is made with three tense movements and slow returns to the onset position.
- intensive "to be very sick" is given a single tense articulation: A tense onset hold followed by a single very rapid motion to a long final hold.
- resultativeResultativeA resultative is a phrase that indicates the state of a noun resulting from the completion of the verb. In the English examples below, the affected noun is shown in bold and the resulting predicate is in italics:...
"to become fully sick" (that is, a complete change of health) is made with an accelerando articulation: A single elongated tense movement which starts slowly and heavily, accelerating to a long final hold. - approximative "to be sort of sick, to be a little sick" is made with a reduplicated lax articulation: A spacially extremely reduced, minimal movement, involving a dozen iterations without contact.
- semblitive "to appear to be sick" [no description]
- increasing "to get more and more sick" is made with the movements becoming more and more intense.
These modulations readily combine with each other to create yet finer distinctions. Not all verbs take all aspects, and the forms they do take will not necessarily be completely analogous to the verb illustrated here. Conversely, not all aspects are possible with this one verb.
Aspect is unusual in ASL in that transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
s derived for aspect lose their transitivity. That is, while you can sign 'dog chew bone' for the dog chewed on a bone, or 'she look-at me' for she looked at me, you cannot do the same in the durative to mean the dog gnawed on the bone or she stared at me. Instead, you must use other strategies, such as a topic construction (see below) to avoid having an object for the verb.
Verbal number
Reduplication is also used for expressing verbal number. Verbal number indicates that the action of the verb is repeated; in the case of ASL it is apparently limited to transitive verbs, where the motion of the verb is either extended or repeated to cover multiple object or recipient loci. (Simple plurality of action can also be conveyed with reduplication, but without indexing any object loci; in fact, such aspectual forms do not allow objects, as noted above.) There are specific dual forms (and for some signers trial forms), as well as plurals. With dual objects, the motion of the verb may be made twice with one hand, or simultaneously with both; while with plurals the object loci may be taken as a group by using a single sweep of the signing hand while the verbal motion is being performed, or individuated by iterating the move across the sweep. For example, 'to ask someone a question' is signed by flexing the index finger of an upright G hand in the direction of that person; the dual involves flexing it at both object loci (sequentially with one hand or simultaneously with both), the simple plural involves a single flexing which spans the object group while the hand arcs across it, and the individuated plural involves multiple rapid flexings while the hand arcs. If the singular verb uses reduplication, that is lost in the dual and plural forms.Syntax
ASL syntaxSyntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
is primarily conveyed through a combination of word order and non-manual features. Early accounts of word order, among other issues, were often confused because non-manual features were not considered.
Word order
The basic constituent order of clauseClause
In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...
s in ASL is subject–verb–object (Mastering ASL). However, the subject, object, or both may be expressed as a topic and then omitted from the clauses and sentences that follow, as ASL is a pro-drop language. The full sentence structure in ASL is [topic] [subject] verb [object] [subject-pronoun-tag]. Topics and tags are both indicated with non-manual features, and both give a great deal of flexibility to ASL word order. Within a noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
, the word order is noun-number and noun-adjective.
ASL does not have a copula (linking 'to be' verb). For example, my hair is wet is signed 'my hair wet', and my name is Pete may be signed '[name my]TOPIC P-E-T-E'.
Topic and main clauses
A topic sets off background information that will be discussed in the following main clause. Topic constructions are not often used in standard English, but they are common in some dialects, as in,In ASL, the eyebrows are raised during the production of a topic, and often a slight pause follows:
ASL utterances do not require topics, but their use is extremely common. They are used for purposes of information flow
Information flow
In discourse-based grammatical theory, information flow is any tracking of referential information by speakers. Information may be new, just introduced into the conversation; given, already active in the speakers' consciousness; or old, no longer active...
, to set up referent loci (see above), and to supply objects for verbs which are grammatically prevented from taking objects themselves (see below).
Without a topic, the dog chased my cat is signed:
However, people tend to want to set up the object of their concern first and then discuss what happened to it. In English, we do this with passive
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
clauses: my cat was chased by the dog. In ASL, topics are used with similar effect:
If the word order of the main clause is changed, the meaning of the utterance also changes:
Subject pronoun tags
Information may also be added after the main clause as a kind of 'afterthought'. In ASL this is commonly seen with subject pronouns. These are accompanied by a nod of the head, and make a statement more emphatic:versus
The subject need not be mentioned, as in
versus
Aspect, topics, and transitivity
As noted above, in ASL aspectually marked verbs cannot take objects. To deal with this, the object must be known from context so that it does not need to be further specified. This is accomplished in two ways:- The object may be made prominent in a prior clause, or
- It may be used as the topic of the utterance at hand.
Of these two strategies, the first is the more common. For my friend was typing her term paper all night to be used with a durative aspect, this would result in
The less colloquial topic construction may come out as,
Negation
NegatedNegation
In logic and mathematics, negation, also called logical complement, is an operation on propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. Intuitively, the negation of a proposition is true when that proposition is false, and vice versa. In classical logic negation is normally identified...
clauses may be signaled by shaking the head during the entire clause. A topic, however, cannot be so negated; the headshake can only be produced during the production of the main clause. (A second type of negation starts with the verb and continues to the end of the clause.)
In addition, in many communities, negation is put at the end of the clause, unless there is a wh- question word. For example, the sentence, "I thought the movie was not good," could be signed as, "BEFORE MOVIE ME SEE, THINK WHAT? IT GOOD NOT."
There are two manual signs that negate a sentence, NOT and NONE, which are accompanied by a shake of the head. NONE is typically used when talking about possession:
- English: I don't have any dogs.
- ASL: DOG I HAVE NONE
NOT negates a verb:
- English: I don't like to play tennis.
- ASL: TENNIS I LIKE PLAY NOT
Questions
Yes-no questions are signaled by raising the eyebrows, while wh- (information) questionsInterrogative word
In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
require a lowering of the eyebrows. In both, the questioner leans forward slightly and extends the duration of the last sign. Yes-no questions do not involve a change of word order. In wh- questions, the question word comes at the end, unlike in English where it is the first word in the question.
Raised eyebrows are also used for rhetorical question
Rhetorical question
A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question posed for its persuasive effect without the expectation of a reply. Rhetorical questions encourage the listener to think about what the answer to the question must be. When a speaker states, "How much longer must our people...
s which are not intended to elicit an answer, for the same reason that general topic–comment structures have raised eyebrows on the topic portion. Rhetorical questions are much more common in ASL than in English. For example, I don't like garlic may be signed,
This strategy is commonly used instead of signing the word 'because' for clarity or emphasis. For instance, I love to eat pasta because I am Italian would be signed,
Relative clauses
Relative clauseRelative clause
A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...
s are signaled by tilting back the head and raising the eyebrows and upper lip. This is done during the performance of the entire clause. There is no change in word order. For example, the dog which recently chased the cat came home would be signed,
where the brackets here indicate the duration of the non-manual features. If the sign 'recently' were made without these features, it would lie outside the relative clause, and the meaning would change to "the dog which chased the cat recently came home".
Deixis
In ASL signers set up regions of space (loci) for specific referents (see above); these can then be referred to indexically by pointing at those locations with pronouns and indexical verbs.Pronouns
Personal pronouns in ASL are indexic. That is, they point to their referent, or to a locus representing their referent. When the referent is physically present, pronouns involve simply pointing at the referent, with different handshapes for different pronominal uses: A 'G' handshape is a personal pronounPersonal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
, an extended 'B' handshape with an outward palm orientation is a possessive pronoun
Possessive pronoun
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
, and an extended-thumb 'A' handshape is a reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
; these may be combined with numeral signs to sign 'you two', 'us three', 'all of them', etc.
If the referent is not physically present, the speaker identifies the referent and then points to a location (the locus) in the sign space near their body. This locus can then be pointed at to refer to the referent. Theoretically, any number of loci my be set up, as long as the signer and recipient remember them all, but in practice, no more than eight loci are used.
Meier 1990 demonstrates that only two grammatical person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
s are distinguished in ASL: First person and non-first person, as in Damin
Damin
Damin was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the Lardil and the Yangkaal tribes in Aboriginal Australia. Both inhabit islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Lardil on Mornington Island, the largest island of the Wesley Group, and the Yangkaal and Forsyth Islands...
. Both persons come in several numbers as well as with signs such as 'my' and 'by myself'.
Meier provides several arguments for believing that ASL does not formally distinguish second from third person. For example, when pointing to a person that is physically present, a pronoun is equivalent to either 'you' or '(s)he' depending on the discourse. There is nothing in the sign itself, nor in the direction of eye gaze or body posture, that can be relied on to make this distinction. That is, the same formal sign can refer to any of several second or third persons, which the indexic nature of the pronoun makes clear. In English, indexic uses also occur, as in 'I need you to go to the store and you to stay here', but not so ubiquitously. In contrast,several first person ASL pronouns, such as the plural possessive ('our'), look different from their non-first person equivalents, and a couple of pronouns do not occur in the first person at all, so first and non-first persons are formally distinct.
Personal pronouns have separate forms for singular ('I' and 'you/(s)he') and plural ('we' and 'you/they'). These have possessive
Possessive pronoun
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
counterparts: 'my', 'our', 'your/his/her', 'your/their'. In addition, there are pronoun forms which incorporate numerals from two to five ('the three of us', 'the four of you/them', etc.), though the dual
Dual (grammatical number)
Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...
pronouns are slightly idiosyncratic in form (i.e., they have a K rather than 2 handshape, and the wrist nods rather than circles). These numeral-incorporated pronouns have no possessive equivalents.
Also among the personal pronouns are the 'self' forms ('by myself', 'by your/themselves', etc.). These only occur in the singular and plural (there is no numeral incorporation), and are only found as subjects. They have derived emphatic and 'characterizing' forms, with modifications used for derivation rather like those for verbal aspect. The 'characterizing' pronoun is used when describing someone who has just been mentioned. It only occurs as a non-first person singular form.
Finally there are formal pronouns used for honored guests. These occur as singular and plural in the non-first person, but only as singular in the first person.
ASL is a pro-drop language, which means that pronouns are not used when the referent is obvious from context and is not being emphasized.
Indexical verbs
Within ASL there is a class of indexical (often called 'directional') verbs. These include the signs for 'see', 'pay', 'give', 'show', 'invite', 'help', 'send', 'bite', etc. These verbs include an element of motion that indexes one or more referents, either physically present or set up through the referent locus system. If there are two loci, the first indicates the subject and the second the object, direct or indirect depending on the verb, reflecting the basic word order of ASL. For example, 'give' is a bi-indexical verb based on a flattened M/O handshape. For 'I give you', the hand moves from myself toward you; for 'you give me', it moves from you to me. 'See' is indicated with a V handshape. Two loci for a dog and a cat can be set up, with the sign moving between them to indicate 'the dog sees the cat' (if it starts at the locus for dog and moves toward the locus for cat) or 'the cat sees the dog' (with the motion in the opposite direction), or the V hand can circulate between both loci and myself to mean 'we (the dog, the cat, and myself) see each other'. The verb 'to be in pain' (index fingers pointed at each other and alternately approaching and separating) is signed at the location of the pain (head for headache, cheek for toothache, abdomen for stomachache, etc.). This is normally done in relation to the signer's own body, regardless of the person feeling the pain, but may take also use the locus system, especially for body parts which are not normally part of the sign space, such as the leg. There are also spatial verbs such as put-up and put-below, which allow signers to specify where things are or how they moved them around.Time-sequenced ordering
ASL makes heavy use of time-sequenced ordering, meaning that events are signed in the order in which they occur. For example, for I was late to class last night because my boss handed me a huge stack of work after lunch yesterday, one would sign 'yesterday lunch finish, boss give-me work big-stack, night class late-me'. In stories, however, ordering is malleable, since one can choose to sequence the events either in the order in which they occurred or in the order in which one found out about them.Syntactic word order
In addition to its basic topic–comment structure, ASL typically places an adjective after a noun, though it may occur before the noun for stylistic purposes. Numerals also occur after the noun, a very rare pattern among oral languages.- English: I have a brown dog.
- ASL: DOG BROWN I HAVE
Adverbs, however, occur before the verbs. Most of the time adverbs are simply the same sign as an adjective, distinguished by the context of the sentence.
- English: I enter the house quietly.
- ASL: HOUSE I QUIET ENTER
When the scope of the adverb is the entire clause, as in the case of time, it comes before the topic. This is the only thing which can appear before the topic in ASL: time–topic–comment.
- English: I'm going to the store at 9:00AM.
- ASL: 9-HOUR MORNING STORE I GO
Modal verb
Modal verb
A modal verb is a type of auxiliary verb that is used to indicate modality -- that is, likelihood, ability, permission, and obligation...
s come after the main verb of the clause:
- English: I can go to the store for you.
- ASL: FOR YOU, STORE I GO CAN
Conjunctions
There is no separate sign in ASL for the conjunction and. Instead, multiple sentences or phrases are combined with a short pause between. Often, lists are specified with a listing and ordering technique, a simple version of which is to show the length of the list first with the nondominant hand, then to describe each element after pointing to the nondominant finger that represents it.- English: I have three cats and they are named Billy, Bob, and Buddy.
- ASL: CAT I HAVE THREE-LIST. NAME, FIRST-OF-THREE-LIST B-I-L-L-Y, SECOND-OF-THREE-LIST B-O-B, THIRD-OF-THREE-LIST B-U-D-D-Y.
There is a manual sign for the conjunction or, but the concept is usually signed nonmanually with a slight shoulder twist.
- English: I'll leave at 5 or 6 o'clock.
- ASL: I LEAVE TIME 5 [shoulder shift] TIME 6.
The manual sign for the conjunction but is similar to the sign for different. It is more likely to be used in Signed Exact English than in ASL. Instead, shoulder shifts can be used, similar to "or" with appropriate facial expression.
- English: I like to swim, but I don't like to run.
- ASL/SEE: SWIM I LIKE, BUT RUN I LIKE-NOT
- ASL: SWIM I LIKE, [shoulder shift] RUN I LIKE-NOT
Further reading
- Signing Naturally by Ken Mikos
- The Syntax of American Sign Language: Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structure by Carol Jan Neidle
- Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language by Scott K. Liddell
- Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction, 4th Ed. by Clayton Valli