tense in sign languages

[Susan Fischer]

Nihonsyuwa seems to have a past tense marker, signalled by the mouth
going "po".  It is distinct from the signed Japanese "ta" as well as
from the completive marker analogous to "finish".  However, I do not
know whether it is obligatory.
Susan Fischer

James T. Myers wrote:

>A colleague of mine asked me to post a (perhaps naive) question to the
>list:  Is there any sign language that unambiguously has grammatical
>tense?  Apparently the case in ASL is somewhat unclear.  Thanks.
>
>James Myers
>Graduate Institute of Linguistics
>National Chung Cheng University
>Min-Hsiung, Chia-Yi  621
>TAIWAN, ROC
>Email:  lngmyers at ccunix.ccu.edu.tw
>Web:    http://www.ccunix.ccu.edu.tw/~lngmyers/
>Phone:  886-5-242-8251
>Fax:    886-5-272-1654
>

--
Susan Fischer                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           e-mail: fischer at mail.rit.edu
NTID/RIT        HLC-2420                                                                                                                                                 phone: 1-585-475-6558 (v/TTY)
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