Hopefully you have gained some insight into how spoken languages (such as English) and visual languages (such as ASL) use variou
s grammatical elements and tools to convey meaning. Briefly compare and contrast ASL and English, highlighting key elements such as verb tenses, sentence order, structural patterns, or other elements you have learned so far.
For structural patterns I have noticed that ASL does not communicate every single word in asentence to make the sentence understandable whereas spoken English does. In ASL Presenttense: Signing in present tense is pretty simple — you sign close to your body, just like younormally do in a signed conversation. In ASL Past tense: Signing in past tense is just a bittrickier. To place everything you sign into past tense, you sign finish at chest level either at thebeginning or end of the sentence while saying the word “fish,” a shortened version of “finish.”This signals that everything has already happened. Although it doesn’t matter whether you signthe word finish at the beginning or end of the sentence, most Signers place it at the beginning.
