ABSTRACT
The sentence Cucumbers, Fay doesn’t like them is an example of a pattern that has been called ‘topic–comment’: cucumbers, the Topic (what the sentence is ‘about’) is mentioned first, and only after that comes the Comment (whatever it is that the speaker says about the topic). This chapter presents an excerpt which is from a chapter on the syntax of British Sign Language (BSL). It has been chosen because BSL is a different language from English and one that has sometimes been ignorantly maligned through claims that it lacks grammatical organisation. The main points illustrated in the excerpt are: BSL is not a language with strongly preferred Subject Verb Object order like English; it has much freer word order; and BSL word order is variably influenced by English, depending on the background of the signer and addressee(s), on formality and situation.
