ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the importance of nonmanuals in American Sign Language (ASL) syntax by looking at several different structures that use the nonmanual marker brow raise. It looks at how word order and nonmanuals combine to create yes/no questions, conditionals, and topic structures in ASL. The chapter discusses interrogative questions in ASL. Syntax is the study of the descriptive rules that are needed to build a sentence in a given language. All languages are based on a simple, basic word order with respect to the grammatical subject (S), object (O), and verb (V). Nonmanuals are an important part of distinguishing different syntactic structures which superficially may look the same. In ASL, there are four wh-signs for WHAT, all with the same basic underlying lexical interpretation. Negative signs are typically accompanied by a nonmanual negative marker. The nonmanual for negation in ASL is a headshake from side to side; it can stand alone or appear with a negative lexical item.
