American Sign Language Grammar - Syntax

Syntax

ASL is a subject-verb-object (SVO) language. This default word order is sometimes altered; however, this is marked either with non-manual signals like eyebrow or body position, or with prosodic marking such as pausing.

Non-manual grammatical marking (such as eyebrow movement or head-shaking) may optionally spread over the c-command domain of the node which it is attached to.

It has been claimed that tense in ASL is marked adverbially, and that ASL lacks a separate category of tense markers. However, Aarons et al. (1992, 1995) argue that "Tense" (T) is indeed a distinct category of syntactic head, and that the T node can be occupied either by a modal (e.g. SHOULD) or a lexical tense marker (e.g. FUTURE-TENSE). They support this claim by noting that only one such item can occupy the T slot:

REUBEN	CAN		RENT	VIDEO-TAPE
'Reuben can rent a video tape.'
REUBEN	WILL		RENT	VIDEO-TAPE
'Reuben will rent a video tape.'
* REUBEN	CAN	WILL	RENT	VIDEO-TAPE
* 'Reuben can will rent a video tape.'

Aspect may be marked either by verbal inflection or by separate lexical items.

These are ordered: Tense - Negation - Aspect - Verb:

		neg
GINGER	SHOULD	NOT	EAT	BEEF
'Ginger should not eat beef.'

	neg
DAVE	NOT	FINISH	SEE	MOVIE
'Dave did not see (to completion) the movie.'

Wh-words optionally move rightwards in ASL; claims that there is leftward wh-movement in ASL have been refuted:

		wh
LOVE	JOHN	WHO
'Who loves John?'

This movement can also be observed in the object position. For example, while YESTERDAY must normally follow the object, it may precede the wh-word "WHAT":

JUAN	BUY	BOOK	YESTERDAY
'Juan bought a book yesterday.'

* JUAN	BUY	YESTERDAY	BOOK
* 'Juan bought a book yesterday.'

			wh
JUAN	BUY	YESTERDAY	"WHAT"
'What did Juan buy yesterday?'

ASL also has questions where the wh-word occurs twice, copied in final position:

wh
"WHAT	JUAN	BUY	"WHAT"
'What did Juan buy?'

ASL sentences may have up to two marked topics. There are multiple non-manual topic markers, all of which involve raised eyebrows:

tm1
BAGELS,	BEN	LIKE
'Bagels, Ben likes.'

tm2
VEGETABLES,	GEORGE	PREFER	BROCCOLI
'As for vegetables, George prefers broccoli.'