ASL Sentence Structure (American Sign Language)

Factual Questions
1

I’m trying to learn ASL, but I’m having trouble grasping how sentences are structured. As I understand it, the most important part of the sentence would come first, followed by the smaller details. But how do I identify what the most important part of the sentence is?

For instance, in this sentence “While in France, Bill likes driving his car slowly” what would be the most important part? Bill? France? Driving Slowly?

I guess I’m just looking for people’s suggestions on how I can better familiarize myself with these matters.

2

shameless, but last bump

3

This is really hard to explain in text. Spacial relationships are important in ASL. I usually establish the subject of a sentence in the middle of my airspace and then go about setting up whatever’s happening aroung it.

I’d sign this as:

Bill go France, drive slow. Context in previous sentence might have alady established that we’re talking about Bill, so the first part might not be needed. “Likes” feels unnecessary; I’d probably leave it out. If you feel it important to convey Bill’s affinity for slow driving, you could toss in ‘prefer’ before ‘drive’.

4

Me try learn ASL. Don’t understand sentence order. I think - first most important word, second - details? Which word most important?

Somebody else might sign that differently. That’s why it’s called interpretation instead of translation.

5

I’m no expert on ASL, but I did study it for a while and I’ve worked with quite a few deaf people. The word order is much more fluid than English (and is based on FSL, so it’s closer to French word order than English in the first place).

Patty, is the “go” verb really necessary? Why not just sign “Bill France (or Bill in France) want (or prefer) drive slow”?

6

I feel like I need to establish a relationship between Bill and France. So I’d use go/went (or maybe visit/vacation) to make it clear I’m not talking about somebody named “Bill France”. Another way might be to establish France (or the trip/vacation to France) as the topic of discussion, then you wouldn’t need to mention it at all in the next line when discussing Bill’s driving habits.

Ask five people to paint a picture of a flower and you’ll get five different representations, but the details of each painting (type, color, thorns, etc.) should make it clear what we’re looking at. Same with ASL - a number of different ways to converse with signs but in the end the information is conveyed just the same.