What are the building blocks of a sign?
In ASL, 'not yet' and 'late' use the same hand movement. What tells them apart is a tongue and a head shake.
โถ Start the storyA sign is built from a handful of ingredients, just as a spoken word is built from sounds. Linguists describe signs with five parameters: handshape, orientation (which way the palm faces), location (where on or near the body the sign is made), movement, and expression, which means the face, head and body. Change one ingredient and you can change the word.
Step 1: Handshape
The shape the hand makes
Step 2: Orientation
Which way the palm faces
Step 3: Location
Where the sign is made
Step 4: Movement
How the hand travels
Step 5:
Face, head and body
This is the same trick spoken language uses. Each sound in a word, like the b in bat, means nothing alone, yet swapping it for another gives a new word. Linguists call this : small meaningless units combine into larger meaningful ones. In sign languages, the five parameters play the part of the sounds, and the ASL signs THINK and DISAPPOINTED, for example, differ in just one of them.
The face is part of the vocabulary, not decoration. In ASL the sign translated as 'not yet' needs the tongue to touch the lower lip while the head turns from side to side, as well as the hand part. Leave those out and the sign would be read as 'late'. Mouth shapes also carry meaning that differs between languages: in ASL a slightly open mouth with the tongue relaxed means 'carelessly', but a similar expression in British Sign Language means 'boring' or 'unpleasant'.
So when someone says signing is 'just hand movements', the language is already telling them otherwise. Much of the grammar is produced with the face and torso, and the meaningful parts of a sign fit together in several places at once.
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Recap
Every sign is a combination of handshape, orientation, location, movement and face, and changing one can change the meaning.
๐ก A trick to remember it ยท Five dials on a radio, tuned all at once: hand, palm, place, motion, face. Nudge one dial and you land on a different station.
Surprising fact ยท The ASL sign for 'not yet' needs a tongue and head movement; without them it reads as 'late'.
Sources (3)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (15 claims) cites at least one of these.