Signing For Dummies (7 page)

Chapter 2: Digging into Grammar and Numbers

In This Chapter

Looking at nouns and verbs

Using adjectives and adverbs

Talking about tenses

Signing simple sentences

Expressing exclamations

In this chapter, we talk about the building blocks that you need to communicate in any language — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs — and we tell you how to put them together to form simple sentences. We also tell you how to get your body involved to express verb tenses.

Numbers are also pretty basic to understanding any language, so we talk about them in this chapter on basics, too.

Explaining the Parts of Speech

Both English and ASL have subjects and verbs, as well as adjectives and adverbs that describe the subjects and verbs. Also, English and Sign both allow you to converse about the present, past, and future, so whatever English can do, Sign can do — visually. However, unlike English, ASL does not use prepositions as a separate part of speech. As a general rule, most prepositions in Sign, with a few exceptions, act as verbs.

The English language articles —
a, an,
and
the
— are not used in Sign. Likewise, helping verbs, such as
am, is,
and
are,
aren’t used in Sign, either. Passive languages, such as English, use helping verbs. Sign is an active language in which helping (passive) verbs aren’t necessary.

Distinguishing between noun/verb pairs

Some nouns and verbs in Sign share the same handshapes. You distinguish the part of speech by signing the motion once if it’s a verb and twice if it’s a noun.

Though most nouns don’t have a verb that looks the same, all but a few nouns need the double motion. Most of the noun illustrations in this book are represented by double arrows. We let you know about nouns that don’t follow the double-motion rule.

Table 2-1 shows a few noun and verb pairs.

The following examples compare the noun/verb differences.

English:
Please sit in this chair.

Sign:
THIS CHAIR (point) — PLEASE — SIT

English:
I like to fly small planes.

Sign:
SMALL PLANES — FLY — LIKE ME

Modifying with adjectives and adverbs

In English, a modifier can come before or after the word it’s modifying, depending on the sentence. However, in Sign, you typically place the adjective or adverb — the modifier — after the word that it modifies, although, sometimes in Sign, you may find yourself expressing the modifier at the same time you sign the word it modifies — just by using your face.