But, on the facial expression question, these links are more about that:
The past 30 years of linguistic research on sign languages have revealed that there are facial expressions which are used together with manual signs and function as phonological features, morphemes, and syntactic/prosodic markers, for example brow raising marking conditional clauses (Liddell, 1980; Dachkovsky and Sandler, 2009). These facial expressions are clearly communicative in nature and they are used in combination with other meaningful movements (those of the hands).
Basically, facial expressions are grammar in ASL. There are specific meanings assigned to them, which is different than the more subtle nuance that would’ve been my first guess too, a while ago.
Correct. ASL is fascinating because of how visual it is and just how much you can convey by taking the same sign moving it differently (for example you can describe a rough flight by making the sign for airplane and then bouncing it up and down).
I might also add that in addition to your facial expressions form grammar structures, body language (of which facial expressions are a part) also conveys tone/emphasis. For some concrete examples of how this provides context: the sign for thin becomes anorexic if you suck in your cheeks/ stomach while you make it. Similarly, fat can become obese if you puff out your cheeks and slouch a bit while you make it. Or on a more topical note, the sign for fire is made by wiggling your fingers in an upward motion in front of your chest (visual), the size of your sign sort of describes the size of the fire your talking about, small slow movements might describe the dying embers of a campfire, while larger (pushing towards of out of the area you normally sign in) more frantic movements would be used to describe a miles high inferno.
I learned pretty recently that facial expressions are part of ASL and can change a sign’s meaning.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-criticizing-sign-language-interpreters-195855277.html here’s an opinion article that gets into this current controversy more.
But, on the facial expression question, these links are more about that:
from: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3593340/
https://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/facialexpressions.htm
Basically, facial expressions are grammar in ASL. There are specific meanings assigned to them, which is different than the more subtle nuance that would’ve been my first guess too, a while ago.
Correct. ASL is fascinating because of how visual it is and just how much you can convey by taking the same sign moving it differently (for example you can describe a rough flight by making the sign for airplane and then bouncing it up and down).
I might also add that in addition to your facial expressions form grammar structures, body language (of which facial expressions are a part) also conveys tone/emphasis. For some concrete examples of how this provides context: the sign for thin becomes anorexic if you suck in your cheeks/ stomach while you make it. Similarly, fat can become obese if you puff out your cheeks and slouch a bit while you make it. Or on a more topical note, the sign for fire is made by wiggling your fingers in an upward motion in front of your chest (visual), the size of your sign sort of describes the size of the fire your talking about, small slow movements might describe the dying embers of a campfire, while larger (pushing towards of out of the area you normally sign in) more frantic movements would be used to describe a miles high inferno.
Nice, thanks for the links