Eng>ASL "even"

[Ronnie Wilbur]

Funny you should ask --  Cynthia Patschke and I investigated 'even' and
'only' in ASL and found some really interesting results - published Journal
of Pragmatics 30 (1998) 275 - 303.  Title: Body leans and the marking of
contrast in ASL"

You can see from the title that leans are involved, forward for inclusive
'even' and backward for exclusive 'only'.  But there's more, as the notion
of contrast is involved -- so your sentence 'he doesn't want even chocolate
cake' implies that there are other things that he doesn't want and the most
surprising (extreme end of the list) is that he doesn't even want chocolate
cake.  Part of the actual signing would depend on whether it's the
chocolate you want to emphasis, the cake, or the chocolate cake (that is,
what you are contrasting; chocolate things, cake things, dessert things).

Hope this helps.





At 12:21 PM 12/10/99 -0500, you wrote:
>How would one sign in ASL the concept expressed by "even" in the following
>English sentences? Thanks.
>
>Even he doesn't know the answer.
>He doesn't want even chocolate cake.
>
>Michael Hamm
>BA, Math, Sept. '00
>msh210 at nyu.edu
>http://www.crosswinds.net/~msh210/
>
Ronnie Wilbur, Ph.D.
Professor of Linguistics
wilbur at omni.cc.purdue.edu