American Sign Language grammar
The grammar of American Sign Language has rules just like any other sign language or spoken language. ASL grammar studies date back to William Stokoe in the 1960s. This sign language consists of parameters that determine many other grammar rules. Typical word structure in ASL conforms to the SVO/OSV and topic-comment form, supplemented by a noun-adjective order and time-sequenced ordering of clauses. ASL has large CP and DP syntax systems, and also doesn't contain many conjunctions like some other languages do.
Morphology
ASL morphology consists of two different processes: derivational morphology and inflectional morphology.Derivational morphology in ASL occurs when movement in a sign changes the meaningoften between a noun and a verb. For example, for the sign CHAIR, a noun, a person would tap their dominant pointer and middle fingers against their non-dominant pointer and middle fingers twice or more. For the sign SIT, a verb, a person would tap these fingers together only once and with more force.
Inflectional morphology adds units of language to other words. For example, this would be changing 'watch' to 'watches' or 'watching.' In ASL, the sign may remain unchanged as WATCH, or the meaning may change based on non-manual markers.
ASL morphology demonstrates reduplication and indexicality as well.
Derivation
is used to derive new words in ASL, which often differ in meaning from their constituent signs. For example, the signs FACE and STRONG compound to create a new sign FACE^STRONG, meaning 'to resemble'. Compounds undergo the phonetic process of "hold deletion", whereby the holds at the end of the first constituent and the beginning of the second are elided:Many ASL nouns are derived from verbs. This may be done either by reduplicating the movement of the verb if the verb has a single movement, or by restraining the movement of the verb if it already has repeated movement. For example, the noun CHAIR is derived from the verb SIT through reduplication. Another productive method is available for deriving nouns from non-stative verbs. This form of derivation modifies the verb's movement, reduplicating it in a "trilled" manner. For example, this method is used to derive the noun ACTING from the verb ACT.
Characteristic adjectives, which refer to inherent states, may be derived from adjectives which refer to "incidental or temporary states". Characteristic adjectives always use both hands, even if the source adjective only uses one, and they always have repeated, circular movement. Additionally, if the source adjective was one-handed, the derived adjective has alternating movement. "Trilling" may also be used productively to derive adjectives with an "ish" meaning, e.g. BLUE becomes BLUISH.
ASL occasionally uses suffixation in derivation, but less often than in English. Agent nouns may be derived from verbs by adding the suffix AGENT and deleting the final hold of the verb, e.g. TEACH+AGENT 'teacher'. Superlatives are also formed by suffixation, e.g. SMART+MOST 'smartest'.
Certain types of signs, for example those relating to time and age, may incorporate numbers by assimilating their handshape. For example, the word WEEK has handshape /B/ with the weak hand and /1/ with the active hand; the active hand's handshape may be changed to the handshape of any number up to 9 to indicate that many weeks.
There are about 20 non-manual modifiers in ASL, which are either adjectival or adverbial. For example, the adverb 'th', realized as the tongue being placed between the teeth, means 'carelessly / lazily' when combined with a verb:
Degree
is when an individual appears to be making speech sounds, and this is very important for fluent signing. It also has specific 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 sometimes fingerspelled rather than signed to mean 'very sad' and 'very mad'. However, the concept of 'very sad' or 'very mad' can be portrayed with the use of exaggerated body movements and facial expressions. Reduplication of the signs may also occur to emphasize the degree of the statement. 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 either unusually slowly or unusually quickly than it is in the citation forms of 'slow' and 'fast'—not exclusively by making it slower for 'very slow' and faster for 'very fast'.
Reduplication
is morphological repetition, and this 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 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. Similar relationships exist between acquisition and to get, airplane and to fly, also window and to open/close a window. Reduplication is commonly used to express intensity as well as several verbal aspects. It is also used to derive signs such as 'every two weeks' from 'two weeks', and is used for verbal number, 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 blend than a compound. Typically only the final hold 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. 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. 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
ASL, like other mature signed languages, makes extensive use of morphology. Many of ASL's affixes are combined simultaneously rather than sequentially. 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. 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.ASL does have a limited number of concatenative affixes. For example, the agentive suffix 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. It is very similar to the '-ulo' suffix in Esperanto, meaning 'person' by itself and '-related person' when combined with other words.
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.
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 ; 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 classifiers which may be incorporated into signs. A fist may represent an inactive object such as a rock, a horizontal ILY hand may represent an aircraft, a horizontal 3 hand 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, an 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.
The frequency of classifier use depends greatly on genre, occurring at a rate of 17.7% in narratives but only 1.1% in casual speech and 0.9% in formal speech.