American Sign Language: The Signs Of American Sign Language

Reduplication occurs when the motions of a sign are bother shortened and repeated. Reduplication is one of the components that can differentiate a noun from a verb, such as the sign for the verb sit which uses one motion, as compared the noun chair which uses the same motion repeated twice. Reduplications varies from repetition in that reduplication carries grammatical meaning while repetition is used for clarification or carries a non-meaningful motion. Reduplication in sign language generally consists of repetition of the entire sign to convey the full meaning of the sign, repeating only part of the sign is almost completely useless because the meaning of the sign is lost when the characteristic of the sign are dropped. Therefore the entirety of the sign must be repeated to carry any real grammatical meaning in context.

Many of the signs of American Sign Language are combinations elements of two or more signs that are modified to create new meanings. Compounds are hybrids of two or more signs and generally use only elements of its component signs. There are two

The basic structure of a phrase is subject-verb-object, with some variations depending on the complexity and tense of the information. In American Sign Language there are four major lexical categories; nouns, predicates, adjectives and adverbs. In American Sign Language, verb tenses are indicated as past, present or future by and imaginary timeline located on the body, with the past located near the back, present located near the front of the body and future extended further in front of the body. Time can also be signified by the direction of motion used for the sign, so a past tense would be indicated by moving the sign backwards towards the body and future tense would be indicated by moving the sign away from the body. Time is established by the signer at the beginning of the