ASL syntax

[panjomin]

And again!

Mental_floss, whose URL I don’t think I can post here, has a very nice article by Arika Okrent explaining “why sign language interpreters look so animated”-a response to some of the clueless comments made about Lydia Callis, who went viral after interpreting for the mayor of New York during Hurricane Sandy.
There you can see (with photo

Comments

What seems to be the problem?

[spamsink]

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/149593

[panjomin]

Thanks! The last time I posted here (which was a while ago) posts with links were getting rejected.

[k0dama]

Facial expression is required for some signs (like popcorn, finish, large, small...etc) and considered to be part of correct ASL grammar.

Imagine how awkward it would be if someone spoke English with no intonation or inflections at all.
You could probably make out most of it, but for the most part you would be so anxious or distracted about which sentences will become questions, or what the emphasis of the sentence is, to the point where you may lose the meaning completely.

I faintly recall reading somewhere that ASL fluent users are sensitive to facial expressions much more than non ASL users, but I can't find a link to it anymore.

[panjomin]

All of this makes the name "sign language" somewhat misleading. I always thought of signs as gestures but there's clearly more to it than that.

Now I really appreciate the Greek name for SL: noematiki/ νοηματική. It comes from a word that means "sign" but also "thought" and "meaning," so it's something like "thought-ish" or "meaning-ese."

[k0dama]

I think "sign language" is fine..
it could be worse and be called "gesture language" or "hand shapes language".

[imps85]

we have got sign language speakers on the 8 pm news(the main news of the day) on phoenix a subsidiary of the first public channel of Germany. I have read an article in a magazine before about sign language and its syntax(German sign language)

[panjomin]

I suppose they need very long arms to translate the separable verbs. (Sorry--just kidding!)