[sw-l] Verb Conjugations in American Sign Language (ASL) and others...

[Cynthia Sheppard-Johnston,CSC]

Mr. Hoepleman --

There is a Sign Language Lingusitics list. Your question may be better 
posed there. If you wish, I can do that for you. I will not submit it 
without your permission.

Two books, you may want to look at are

American Sign Language, Baker and Cokely

American Sign Language Linguistics, (don't know off-hand, the book is at 
home).

American Sign Language tends to set the tense and then anything after 
that remains in that tense until the tense is changed. This is a very 
simplisitic explanation for a very complex question. The other list and 
other resources can fully explain how American Sign Language handles 
verb tenses.

Cj

Valerie Sutton wrote:

> SignWriting List
>
> November 21, 2004
>
>
> From: Jakob Hoepelman <HOEPEL at de.ibm.com>
>
> Date: September 5, 2004
>
> To: Sutton at SignBank.org
>
> Subject: A question on tense in ASL
>
>
> Dear Mrs Sutton,
>
> I'm doing a short survey of pictorial languages and auxiliary systems 
> and I
>
> found your name under
>
> http://signbank.org/dictionaries/pictdict/pictdict09.html. I have a
>
> linguistic question I would like to ask and I would be very grateful 
> if you
>
> could answer it or refer me to some site or piece of literature for an
>
> answer. Going through the ASL - English- ASL dictionaries I wondered how
>
> verb tenses and related phenomena (past, present, future, present 
> perfect,
>
> progressive etc.) are expressed in ASL. Is the full system of English
>
> tenses used? Is it needed it all? If not, how much of it is in actual 
> use?
>
> Are temporal relations expressed by morphologically, or are they 
> expressed
>
> by other means, like adverb (yesterday, tomorrow etc.) + root form?
>
> I hope this request is not demanding too much of your time. Just a short
>
> hint would help me a lot.
>
> Thanking you beforehand
>
>
> Mit freundlichem Gruß,
>
> With kind regards,
>
> Met vriendelijke groeten
>
> Prof. Dr. Jakob Hoepelman
>
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
>
> Dear SignWriting List, and Professor Hoepelman!
>
> Please accept my apology for taking sooo long to answer your email 
> question about verbs in ASL, written to me on September 5th!
>
>
> American Sign Language grammar is not the same as English grammar. 
> American Sign Language has sophisticated verb conjugations and other 
> grammatical structures, but those verb conjugations have nothing to do 
> with the way English conjugates verbs. ASL and English are totally 
> separate languages that are not dependent on each other...They are 
> standalone languages! And that is precisely why having a way to write 
> American Sign Language, or any other signed language, has value!
>
>
> So yes...verb conjugations are needed in every language, whether they 
> be signed or spoken. And each individual signed language is also 
> different from each other, just as spoken languages are not the same 
> as other spoken languages...
>
>
> And yes...all naturally evolved signed languages have their own forms 
> of adverbs, adjectives etc...We actually have some vert conjugations 
> and adverbs written in ASL, but because my time is so tight it will 
> take me time to write an article about that...but we need that, I 
> agree! So as soon as I have posted that I will inform you all -
>
>
> Meanwhile I am sure you know that DGS...German Sign Language...is 
> written in SignWriting? I would suggest writing to Stefan about 
> writing verb conjugations and adverbs in DGS:
>
>
> Stefan Woehrmann
>
> stefanwoehrmann at gebaerdenschrift.de
>
>
> Many thanks for writing -
>
>
> Val ;-)
>
>
>
> Valerie Sutton
>
> Sutton at SignWriting.org
>
>
> 1. SignWritingSite
>
> http://www.SignWriting.org
>
> Read & Write Sign Languages
>
>
> 2. SignBankSite
>
> http://www.SignBank.org
>
> Sign Language Dictionaries
>
>
>
>
>

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