This kind of language, as we know is used by deaf communities in United States and English-speaking part of Canada. Surprisingly Britain sign language is completely different although they share the same oral language.
ASL contains phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics as oral language. The grammar is unrelated to English, there is no number and no tense, they neither use articles. As in oral language, American Sign grammar was established by a group, and their rules are based in sign speakers as they have the same way of sing a particular expression.
ASL sentences follow a "topic" "comment" arrangement, this means that comment is the predicate, and the predicate says something about the topic, the subject.
When discussing past and future events we tend to establish a time-frame before the rest of the sentence.
That gives us a "time" "topic" "comment" structure.
For example: “yesterday Pro1( I or me ) do my homework”.
Pro1, you simply point yourself, it means first person pronoun.
Topicalisation used to be said when you use the subject of the sentence as the topic. “My Homework” becomes the subject instead of me. The fact that I did it yesterday becomes the comment.
There are some different ways to put the words in order in ASL.
We could say: “ I from Florida” “ I from Florida I” or “from Florida I”. The last one is only used when the subject of the conversation has been introduced .
ASL doesn’t use state verbs.
These are some elemental knowledge about American Sign Language. In another post we will see some sign vocabulary and expressions .
By: Elena Blanco Corbacho.
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