ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a portion of inflectional morphology in ASL, in which we have determined that temporal aspect and number inflections may apply not only to verb stems, but also to longer sequences that are either phrases or serial verbs. The data sample is based on the responses of deaf adult native signers to one test in the Test Battery for ASL Morphology and Syntax developed by Supalla et al. (in press), and then amplified by our own judgments of permissible structures. The Verb Inflection Production Test (VIP) was originally designed to elicit production of what might be considered basic aspect and number inflections (i.e., repeated, dual), and embedded or combined inflections (i.e., dual embedded within repeated, repeated embedded within dual). In accord with previous descriptions of ASL inflections for aspect and number, we expected that native signers would produce these inflections, individually or in combination (depending on the eliciting event), applied to a single verb stem. However, native signers often responded with an expanded series of verb phrases, which resembled an inflected verb but consisted of more than one sign, rather than producing a single inflected verb. This chapter attempts to determine the structure of this sequencing behavior.
