American Sign Language Linguistics

Catalog description

This course covers the major features of the linguistic structure and social uses of ASL: 1) Phonology– the study of the raw materials of signs; examination of the structure of the physical signals of ASL, the customary patterns for combining them, and the influence of signs on one another in connected discourse. 2) Morphology– building and storing words; study of the basic meaningful units of ASL, including discussion of word creation, compounding, borrowing, affixing, and numeral incorporation. 3) Syntax– building sentences and longer structures; examination of the word order of ASL sentences, non-manual syntactic signals, and discourse structures; discussion of the use of space in ASL, including an examination of verbs with subject and object agreement and of spatial-locative verbs. 4) Sociolinguistic Application– discussion of language variation and contact in the Deaf community.