Role of Topicalization in American Sign Language
March 14, 2022
According to the National Association of the Deaf, it takes time, patience, practice, and a good sense of humor to learn American Sign Language (ASL). Where learning the individual signs is relatively easy, ASL is no different than spoken languages when it comes to having its own unique rules of grammar and syntax. Different sign languages are used in different parts of the world, but American Sign Language is a visual natural language that is complete and possess many of the same properties of spoken English. ASL is the primary language for most English-speaking North Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing. Like the vast majority of spoken languages, no one individual is responsible for inventing ASL and linguistic experts believe that it likely evolved about two hundred years ago from LSF (Langue des Signes Française) or French Sign Language.
ASL Grammar and Word Orders
Grammar is the set of rules for using a language that is decided by the group of language users. For American Sign Language, the grammar is totally separate from that of English and its users have decided the phonology (how signs are built), morphology (what a sign means), syntax (the order in which signs are presented), and pragmatics (the way context influences signing). Generally speaking, ASL does not use articles (a, an, and the) or “be verbs” like is, are, am, was or were. Depending on what is being said, signed sentences can be expressed using several different word orders. Similar to spoken English, ASL is most often signed as subject-verb-object. Except for statements being made in the present tense, signers normally establish past or future tense early on before the rest of the sentence using a “time sign”.
Topic-Comment and Topicalization
In linguistics, the topic of a sentence is what is being talked about and the comment (or predicate) is what is being said about the topic. ASL sentences are most often signed in a topic-comment arrangement where the subject of the sentence is the topic, and the predicate is the signed comment. Similar to active and passive voice in English, where you would say the boy drew the picture in active voice, when spoken in passive voice you would say the picture was drawn by the boy. Topicalization in American Sign Language is the process of establishing a topic at the beginning of the sentence using physical behaviors (e.g. – raised eyebrow) to introduce the object and turn it into the topic. By preposing the object to the beginning of the sentence, emphasis and focus is directed at the topic. Although a “time sign” can be at the end of sentence, ASL most often relies on a time-subject-verb-object word order.
Listen and Sign -plus- Watch and Speak
Sign language has helped scientists to better understand the neurobiology of language development as well as how to better treat injuries to the language system. Whether signed or spoken, the building of complex phrases occurs in the same basic areas of the brain. But, unlike conversations between two people who can hear, simultaneous ASL interpretation requires an interpreter to both listen and sign as well as watch and speak, and all four at the same time. Sign language interpreters must be able to understand and express the meanings and intentions in the statements being translated. Most often, signers are trained to work between languages with compatible cultures like spoken English and American Sign Language. With today’s growing need for all-inclusive communications and a faster exchange of information, highly-skilled sign language interpreters with multilingual communication skill sets are in high demand.
Similar to what happens with spoken languages, signers did not always agree as American Sign Language was developed. However, ASL is such a complete language that the older folks today don’t always agree with techniques used by younger signers. If you are responsible for conducting multilingual events, contact ProLingo to discuss how you can achieve the best results by utilizing our services for the facilitation of a hearing-impaired intracultural presentation, podcast, conference, or meeting.
