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Mr. Hoepleman --<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
Two books, you may want to look at are <br>
<br>
American Sign Language, Baker and Cokely<br>
<br>
American Sign Language Linguistics, (don't know off-hand, the book is
at home).<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
Cj<br>
<br>
Valerie Sutton wrote:<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid05A97A91-3BEC-11D9-833B-000A959F2614@signwriting.org"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; ">
<title>[sw-l] Verb Conjugations in American Sign Language (ASL) and
others...</title>
<p><b><font face="Helvetica">SignWriting List </font></b></p>
<p><b><font face="Helvetica">November 21, 2004 </font></b></p>
<br>
<p><b><font face="Helvetica">From:</font></b> <font face="Helvetica">Jakob
Hoepelman <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:HOEPEL@de.ibm.com"><HOEPEL@de.ibm.com></a> </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Helvetica">Date:</font></b> <font face="Helvetica">September
5, 2004 </font></p>
<p><b><font face="Helvetica">To:</font></b> <font face="Helvetica"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Sutton@SignBank.org">Sutton@SignBank.org</a>
</font></p>
<p><b><font face="Helvetica">Subject: A question on tense in ASL </font></b></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Dear Mrs Sutton, </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">I'm doing a short survey of pictorial
languages and auxiliary systems and I </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">found your name under </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://signbank.org/dictionaries/pictdict/pictdict09.html">http://signbank.org/dictionaries/pictdict/pictdict09.html</a>.
I have a </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">linguistic question I would like to ask and
I would be very grateful if you </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">could answer it or refer me to some site or
piece of literature for an </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">answer. Going through the ASL - English-
ASL dictionaries I wondered how </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">verb tenses and related phenomena (past,
present, future, present perfect, </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">progressive etc.) are expressed in ASL. Is
the full system of English </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">tenses used? Is it needed it all? If not,
how much of it is in actual use? </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Are temporal relations expressed by
morphologically, or are they expressed </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">by other means, like adverb (yesterday,
tomorrow etc.) + root form? </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">I hope this request is not demanding too
much of your time. Just a short </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">hint would help me a lot. </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Thanking you beforehand </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Mit freundlichem Gruß, </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">With kind regards, </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Met vriendelijke groeten </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Prof. Dr. Jakob Hoepelman </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">----------------------------------------- </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Dear SignWriting List, and Professor
Hoepelman! </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Please accept my apology for taking sooo
long to answer your email question about verbs in ASL, written to me on
September 5th! </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">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! </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">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... </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">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 - </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">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: </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Stefan Woehrmann </font></p>
<p><font face="Helvetica"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:stefanwoehrmann@gebaerdenschrift.de">stefanwoehrmann@gebaerdenschrift.de</a> </font></p>
<br>
<p><font face="Helvetica">Many thanks for writing - </font></p>
<br>
<p>Val ;-) </p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Valerie Sutton </p>
<p><u><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Sutton@SignWriting.org">Sutton@SignWriting.org</a></u> </p>
<br>
<p>1. SignWritingSite </p>
<p><u><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.SignWriting.org">http://www.SignWriting.org</a></u> </p>
<p>Read & Write Sign Languages </p>
<br>
<p>2. SignBankSite </p>
<p><u><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.SignBank.org">http://www.SignBank.org</a></u> </p>
<p>Sign Language Dictionaries<font face="Helvetica"> </font></p>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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