LIN-664 Survey of American Sign Language Syntax

Course Overview

This course begins by examining the various roles of nonmanual signals within ASL grammar and ASL discourse. This leads to the role of nonmanual signs in helping to determine the structure of ASL sentences. Next, the course examines the order of constituents within ASL sentences, including topics and topicalization, subject pronoun copy, deletion of subjects and objects, and the placement of tense markers. The next section of the course focuses on the use of space in ASL discourse, verb classes based on how space is used, verb agreement, and conceptual mapping. The course concludes by examining subordination and specific types of ASL syntactic structures including relative clauses, conditional clauses, and related constructions.