American Sign Language grammar

ASL has large CP and DP syntax systems, and also doesn't contain many conjunctions like some other languages do.

[3] Derivational morphology in ASL occurs when movement in a sign changes the meaning - often between a noun and a verb.

In ASL, the sign may remain unchanged as WATCH, or the meaning may change based on NMM (Non-Manual-Markers).

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.

For example, the noun clothes is formed from the verb to wear, signed by brushing open 5 hands down the chest once, by repeating it with a reduced degree of motion.

For example, Ted Supalla's seminal work on ASL verbs of motion revealed that these signs consist of many different affixes, articulated simultaneously according to complex grammatical constraints.

[15] This differs from the concatenative morphology of many spoken languages, which except for suprasegmental features such as tone are tightly constrained by the sequential nature of voice sounds.

For example, the agentive suffix (similar to the English '-er') is made by placing two B or 5 hands in front of the torso, palms facing each other, and lowering them.

'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.).

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.

If a person moves to a new community where someone already has their name sign, then the newcomer is obligated to modify theirs[dubious – discuss].

[25] Some examples of non-manual markers would be the shifting of shoulders, the lowering or raising of eyebrows, a head nod or shake, scrunching of the nose, pursing of the lips, or an open mouth.

Babies learn and acquire more motor skills in the arms, shoulders, knuckles, and fingers thanks to the early acquisition of signed language.

[33] These non-manual grammatical markings (such as eyebrow movement or head-shaking) may optionally spread over the c-command domain of the node which it is attached to.

Topics and tags are both indicated with non-manual features, and both give a great deal of flexibility to ASL word order.

[38] For example: MYHAIRWETMY HAIR WETmy hair is wet[namemy]TOPICP-E-T-E[name my]TOPIC P-E-T-Emy name is PeteIn 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.

HOUSEIQUIETENTERHOUSE I QUIET ENTERI enter the house quietly.When the scope of the adverb is the entire clause, as in the case of time, it comes before the topic.

Topic constructions are not often used in standard English, but they are common in some dialects, as in, That dog, I never could hunt him.Topicalization is used productively in ASL and often results in surface forms that do not follow the basic SVO word order.

In ASL, topics are used with similar effect: [MYCAT]tmDOGCHASE[MY CAT]tm DOG CHASElit.

Toward the end of the sign the head moves forward and to the opposite side, and there is a pause and often an eye blink before continuing.

[55] Relative clauses are signaled by tilting back the head and raising the eyebrows and upper lip.

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".

They can include mouth shape, eye gazes, facial expressions, body shifting, head tilting, and eyebrow raising.

[58] Manual wh-signs are also accompanied by a non-manual grammatical marking (see section 4.4.1), which can include a variety of features.

WHAT, WHAT-DO, WHAT-FOR, WHAT-PU, WHAT- FS, WHEN, WHERE, WHICH, WHO (several variations), WHY, HOW, HOW-MANY[60] As mentioned above, ASL possesses wh-questions with word initial placement, word final placement, in situ structure, but the most unique style of wh-word occurrence in ASL is where the wh-word occurs twice, copied in final position.

This doubling provides a useful template to analyze two separate analyses about whether wh-words move rightward or leftward in ASL.

One of the rightward movement analysis' main arguments is in regards to the non-manual grammatical markings, and their optional spreading over the sentence.

In the rightward analysis both partial and full spreading of non-manual grammatical markers can be accounted for due to the association with the +WH feature over its c-command domain.

This eyebrow raise, slight tilt of the head and lean forward are what indicate that a yes/no question is being asked, without any change in word order from the statement form.

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.