Mouth Morphemes In American Sign Language

In American Sign Language a major part of the language entails being able to express emotions and types of questions through the use of non- manual signals such as when asking a yes-no question the eyebrows will go up but when asking a wh-question such as what the eyebrows go down. Another way to express something is through mouth morphemes this is the way your mouth is shaped to convey different meanings, such as size and grammar. Non-manual signals and mouth morphemes are just as important as any sign and enrich the language to make it possible to effectively communicate. Non-manual signals are created during sign language by facial expressions, mouthing head tilting shoulder movement, and other types of movement that give signs a greater

Grammar in a signed language is completely different then a spoken language so they have to use what they have and what they have is the ability to display words through facial movements and mouth morphemes. Mouth morphemes mostly occur with a manual sign and usually with one sign (Bickford). These small changes can make a sign that originally meant one thing and turn it on its head to form a completely different sign. When executing these mouth morphemes one has to pay attention to what one is really trying to get across to the receiver. In American Sign Language 101 they teach the basic mouth morphemes that have to do with size, such as cha for something that is large, but there is much more that are taught at the upper levels and give the language more depth and

In a paper by jack Hoza entitled Five Non-manual Modifiers That Mitigate Requests and Rejections in American Sign Language he studies five different non-manual signals. The signals he looks at are polite pucker, polite grimace, body/head teeter, tight lips and polite grimace-frown, he discuses their form, production, structure, function, purpose and meaning. (Hoza) He found that the polite pucker is the only non-manual signal that is associated more with easy contexts than with difficult ones, in that it mitigates small impositions.