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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Syntax of American Sign Language: Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structure

The Syntax of American Sign Language: Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structure

Kegl, Judy
Maclaughlin, Dawn
Neidle, Carol

Paperback

Series: Language, Speech, and Communication

Sign LanguageLinguistics

ISBN10: 0262512211
ISBN13: 9780262512213
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Jul 1 2008
Pages: 239
Weight: 0.71
Height: 0.51 Width: 6.01 Depth: 9.03
Language: English
Recent research on the syntax of signed languages has revealed that, apart from some modality-specific differences, signed languages are organized according to the same underlying principles as spoken languages. This book addresses the organization and distribution of functional categories in American Sign Language (ASL), focusing on tense, agreement, and wh-constructions. Signed languages provide illuminating evidence about functional projections of a kind unavailable in the study of spoken languages. Along with manual signing, crucial information is expressed by specific movements of the face and upper body. The authors argue that such nonmanual markings are often direct expressions of abstract syntactic features. The distribution and intensity of these markings provide information about the location of functional heads and the boundaries of functional projections. The authors show how evidence from ASL is useful for evaluating a number of recent theoretical proposals on, among other things, the status of syntactic agreement projections and constraints on phrase structure and the directionality of movement.

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