ASL Proper Sign Order
As many of us know, each language has their own system for word order in sentences and phrases. English operates on a subject -verb -object design, or SVO. ASL on the other hand, functions on an object-subject-verb or OSV design. The following are both examples of how to transform an English statement to a proper phrase in ASL. The statements will be colored to help see the differences. (object-subject-verb)
Example 1:
English: Annie loves red apples. ASL: Apples red, Annie loves.Example 2:
English: Kris enjoys watching scary movies. ASL: Movies scary, Kris enjoys watching.You can see, now that the sentences are colored, that the black lettering or “red” and “scary” are actually the classifier used to describe the noun or object. In the second example you can see that the other black word “enjoys” is describing how Kris watches movies, but is not the noun phrase classifier.
