now that you've got a basic understanding of the building blocks of
ASL starting with the phonology and moving on to the morphology
you can now start to put those parts together in sentences so we'll start
with ASL simple sentences
the first thing that you should understand is something that might be a
little bit counterintuitive to you and that is the basic structure of an ASL
subject-verb-object sentence is subject verb object
now you might be thinking no in ASL you have to have the object first
so if you see a sentence like Bob see the tree with an affirmative nod if you
see that sign like this you might say no that's
english you can't sign it that way but that's incorrect
in fact ASL typically occurs in a subject verb object word order so it's
very common to see that form i have some examples here of other sentences that
might be signed in SVO or subject verb object word order
all of these are marked affirmative as you see the line with the AFF over it
which means that you're going to be nodding your head saying that this in
fact did happen
so i've already shown you the Bob sees the tree
let's see a different one here
I eat the apple or
in all of those you have a subject
a verb and object and that's okay that's the basic structure of ASL
now you do see that frequently but you also frequently see other
word orders and that's what we're going to look at today we're going to
understand why you commonly see many of these other ASL word order options now
to understand how things change from that basic structure or what linguists
call the deep structure of the language to some of the different forms that you
actually see or what's called the surface structure of the language then
we have to first take a look at this idea of transformations a transformation
is when you take the basic form and you change it around for a particular reason
and language all languages it seems
does this to some degree or all languages do this to some degree
so for instance in English whenever we have a sentence that's subject verb object
as most sentences as the deep structure of English is a sentence like Bob sees
the tree then you have the subject verb object but whenever you ask a question
you have to do something different you have to take a helping verb and move it
to the beginning of the sentence you have to say did Bob see the tree or for
instance in English with the normal word order is you have a subject a verb and a
descriptor
so if for instance you had the sentence
Maria is happy but you change it in to a question you have to move that is
Is Maria happy so that makes the verb go first and then the subject and then the
descriptor
similarly in English we have active sentences which are subject verb object
Bob sees the tree and but then we have passive sentences which allow us to
rearrange the sort order the tree was seen by Bob
now we have different reasons that we use transformations in some situations
and not others
but once you understand that in English we do this - we move the SVO word order
in two different forms in order to illustrate different ideas or to
conform to different grammatical expressions so
make sure you understand that this is not something unique to ASL this is
something that all languages do so let's take a look now at some ASL
transformations the first common transformation that you see in ASL is
the repetition of the subject at the end of the sentence as a pronoun
so in the first sentence that we've already discussed we have that sentence
Bob sees the tree
well a common transformation that you'll see is the subject Bob repeated again at
the end of the sentence but when bob is repeated in the sentence the the noun
itself is not reset
instead a pronoun is said that shows you where Bob is so you might say and you
might wonder is that pointing to the tree or to bob well it's pointing to Bob because what
you expect at the end that point at the end is the subject repeated now it doesn't
mean it has to happen doesn't mean it always happens but it can happen
another example with pointing to I at the beginning and I at the end both
pronouns or here again with two pronouns you enjoy the class you
so that's the first, transformation another transformation that you can see
is the deletion of a subject now be careful about this
people who are learning ASL love to delete pronouns
they don't say who's doing what and in general they do it incorrectly because
they don't have the appropriate context to delete the pronoun if there's no
context to the pronoun then you're going to just have a half of the sentence but
in the right context subjects can be deleted
so for instance if you already been talking about bob bob went to the park then
in your next sentence you might sign
to show oh he saw the tree and we assume it's Bob because we've only been talking
about Bob
nobody else is being discussed also with directional verbs like I give you you
give me
well you're not going to need to sign the subject itself because it's part of
the verb
so assuming the subject's already been set up in space you know if i sign he gives
me then I know that's whoever i set up over there he or she gives to me and
then finally subject can be deleted
in order to convey general information people see the trees people eat the
apples people enjoy the class when you're not trying to specify a
particular person
so in all these situations you simply have the sentence sign with the
affirmative marker and with no subject now
we can also find situations where the subject where you expect to find it at
the beginning of the sentence and SVO sentence can be deleted
but then end up showing up at the end of the sentence generally it only shows up
as a pronoun at the end of the sentence
so if we have already been talking about Bob I may not sign Bob at the beginning
of the sentence but i might at the end simply refer back to him
so if Bob's already been set up on my right already been talking about him
then i might sign to show that he saw the tree or if I've been talking about
myself i might sign to indicate I eat apples or again
we know that the thing that's referred to at the end
whether it's a point in this direction or point to a particular person refers
back to the subject of that sentence because that's what we expect to find at
the end so you can have the subject at the beginning the subject at the beginning
and the end or the subject just at the end but remember what you see at the end
is a pronoun
next we find that objects can be topicalized that generally this is done when
the object is already known to the listener
meaning whoever you're talking to a person and that person already has
mentioned the object or you expect that they know what the object is and you
want to bring it up in order to then comment on it so if you
we've been talking about a particular tree that's been struck by lightning and
it's already been a topic of discussion and you might say how
do you know that it was terrible lighting and I might sign when I signed
that i'll say oh that tree the three you're talking about
that's what that questioning face is that's why the topic expression marked
with the line and the T resembles a yes/no question because it's almost as
if i'm asking the person i'm talking to you know the tree well Bob saw it or
perhaps you left an apple in the refrigerator and you're wondering where
it went
and I want to confess to you what happened to it I might sign
to show that I've eaten the Apple or if we're talking I'm talking to you about
one of my classes
maybe we haven't already been discussing the class itself but we're just talking
and i know that you know what
what class i'm talking about because of our relationship and because of the
context of our relationship
then i might sign you do enjoy the class as if i'm saying you know the class and
i'm assuming you're going to say yes you do enjoy it
this is especially common using a topic for the object if you're going to have a
sentence that contains a lot of information
at the end of the sentence classifiers agreeing verbs repetitive
verbs locative verbs things that are going to show spatial information or show a
modification for repetition
if you want to put that at the end then you can make the object the topic
because remember in ASL sentences you generally start with information that is
already known to the listener and you end with whatever you're trying to
emphasize so if you're trying to emphasize visual information
the movement of things who does what to whom
then you're e going to try to get that to the end of your sentence and
the way that you can do that is by taking an object and bringing it to the
beginning by making a topic out of it
subjects can also be topics and you might say well the subject's already at
the beginning of the sentence and that's true but it's not formed as a topic
unless you make the topic facial expression and you pause slightly that
is the way that you're asking this question to the listener and then you
can go on to say whatever you want to say about that
so I say oh you know Bob well he saw the tree
oh I signed it this way
i signed it with the pronoun at the end but I could have also signed it
with the pronoun at the beginning so i could have also said Bob he see tree
that would be fine too
or and that would be something like oh as for me I eat apples or oh you know me i
eat apples and then finally it's also possible to have both the subject and
the object topicalized in this situation
you're trying very hard you're trying to clarify something in a way that's
perhaps difficult to understand perhaps there are a lot of people involved in the
story or a lot of objects involved or the spatial relationships are difficult
so you set each one up as a topic and then go on to say the information you
want to say about it
be careful about overdoing this because if you do it it sort of gives the
impression that you're talking down to someone or you're sort of explaining
something more than is necessary
also in this situation it's typical for the subject to remain in the place just
before the verb
you don't usually have things that separate subjects and verbs
so you have that tendency to say Bob tree see that tendency doesn't come from
ASL that often happens when you have an English user who starts with the
subject and that says oh I don't want to finish this in english word order and
then they sign tree and see
and that would be in atypical word order in ASL usually you're going to
have the object subject and then the verb
if you choose to have both the subject and object topicalized you're not going
to have the subject
the object of the verb and have objects subject
so you see in these examples just that you see the object the tree
the subject Bob and then the end of the sentence he sees it
in this case I've also incorporate a little bit of visual information because
i sat in the tree over here and then I put Bob over here and then I signed see
in the direction of the tree because again trying to clarify these
relationships or I'm sorry
and that case something very specific this class you you enjoy it topics
also be used to set up additional information that's not already a part of
the sentence for example to establish the time that something happened or to
establish the location that something happened
so you might have something like this or or
so the sentence
you have this extra information that's not a part of the main sentence it's not
the subject verb object but that gives additional information about that the
time yesterday the place their store at the store or perhaps the time and the
place there
usf last fall
generally the information that is put in the topic is the information that's
background information this information you're not emphasizing what you want to
emphasize which would say about that topic comes at the end of the sentnece so
you can expect the information to flow from general information
background information to specific information in new information