AUSLAN Past/Present tense forms

[Theresa Smith]

Hi Don,

I'm responding to your number 2 comment about "finish".  Perhaps I'm being
overly sensitive and reading too much into your comment (because I realize it
was not focused on ASL).  Yes, a Signer can use the Sign glossed "finish" to
clarify that s/he was talking about something in the past but

1.  "finish" is not a past tense marker - it's a much richer lexical item than
that
2.  time in ASL is communicated at the discourse level, not the lexical level -
which is probably what you were saying in the first place - the timeframe is
established within the discourse not by tense

Theresa
Theresa B. Smith
ASLIS

Don & Theresa Grushkin wrote:

> I had the opportunity to observe a visitor to our school from Australia
> demonstrate some signs in Auslan.  I was interested to note that Auslan
> seems to have a separate sign for the present and past tense form of DID
> (which looks amazingly like ASL "WHAT-TO-DO!) and SEE vs. SAW.  I didn't
> have the opportunity to talk with her about the linguistics of Auslan, much
> as I would have liked to, so I'm turning to you folks out there in Oz (BSL
> signers are also welcome to give their input to my questions).  My questions
> are:
>
> 1) is there a present tense form of DO in Auslan?
>
> 2) is the presence of specific past/present tense forms some kind of
> carryover from Signed English (the British/Australian version)?  ASL, as you
> know, has no specific signs denoting past/present -- we must add the marker
> "FINISH" to denote past tense
>
> 3) are there a great number of verbs in Auslan with the specific
> past/present tense forms, or is it limited to only a few verbs?
>
> --Don Grushkin