Barron’s The Easy Way to ASL information questions & notes:
NMS:
What is NMS? Non-manual Signals, Facial Expressions, and Non-manual
markers. They all mean the same but you will see all three used in ASL
in high schools, college & in the real world. It is necessary to use
your face to convey the true intent of your feelings or to show
comprehension. Signs without NMS is not ASL. Each sign has the 5
parameters. They are:
1. movement
2. palm orientation
3. placement
4. handshape
5. NMS
Without NMS you cannot understand their full intent of their vocabulary
usage or what they truly mean. When you listen to someone speak, you
listen not only to the words but also to how the words are spoken. The
tone of the voice, the rise and fall of the pitch, the length of the
pause and the steadiness of voice are all features that you latch on to
with little effort in your spoken communication. With ASL you have: the
raised eyebrow, the tilted head, the open mouth, and a sign held
slightly longer than others….all of which shape the meaning of signs
that are made by the hands. Facial grammar is required in ASL. Without
it you Cannot master ASL or truly communicate. There will be many errors
and misunderstanding if you do not use NMS.
NMS in ASL enrich and clarify the meaning of manual signs. Stoke, the
man who discovered ASL is a true foreign language in the 1970s, realized
that NMS are an integral part of the formation of a sign. NMS help show
the adverbs & adjectives of a sentence. What are adverbs? Well, they are
a word or group of words that modify a verb. Adjectives describe a noun.
A GREAT ACTIVITY TO HELP YOU REMEMBER THE DIFFERENCE OF ADJ AND ADVERBS
AND HOW NECESSARY NMS IS WITH THEM: Choose one verb from the list on
the left, and one adverb from the list on the right. Then choose one
student in your class (or your teacher!), and they have to act out the
words that you say.
Verbs Adverbs
walk quickly
run slowly
eat loudly
speak quietly
dance carefully
sing recklessly
write beautifully
sleep sadly
sit happily
stand angrily
There are many roles that NMS have. There are:
1. Non-manual adverbs, adjectives and others
2. lexical non-manual behaviors
3. non-manual grammatical markers
4. emotional states/evaluative judgements
5. prosodic structure
6. discourse structre
7. turn taking
8. backchannel feedback
9. grammatical sound markers
10. mouth movements/morphemes
11. silent ASL
If you look at someones face the eyes show grammatical rules. The
eyebrows and nose show facial expressions and the mouth and cheeks show
‘speed.’-meaning the activity you are signing about not how quickly
someone can sign something.
Eyes
1. Do you maintain eye contact when signing with someone 100% of the
time?
(no)
Why/why not.
-because sometimes depending on a sign and/or distance you have to look
off to show where Something/Someone is.
2. If you are asking a specific question then your eyebrows and head
do what?
Eyebrows will be _(raised)__ & the head (tilts_slightly_forward)
3. Reference places….Reference places or referents are VERY important
in ASL. This is when you look at a specific area around your body and
set up that area as a noun. When you need to draw attention to a
particular place in the signing space you set it up by pointing to it or
looking in the area to draw attention to that area. In this, the eyes
can incorporate referents, that are the signing space, into a sentence.
An example of this is when you use deixis for personal pronouns of
people Not present. Also it can be used when giving directions. Setting
up a house on a corner and then explaining how to go from there to the
grocery store. Referring back to the referent helps make sure someone
has a clear understanding of directions.
4. Sometimes your eyes can highlight key information in a sentences.
When eye contact is accompanied by a raised eyebrow, the head tilting
forward nad a sign held slightly longer than other signs can indicate
THE TOPIC OF A SENTENCE.
5. When a signers eyes are moving and losing eye contact with you it
could also mean the signer is trying to reinforce the direction in which
certain signs might be moving. Meaning a signer can make the sentence
“I watched him walk past me” by simply gazing from the right to
the left side of the signing space.
6. Last the eye can lose contact with you because the signer is trying
to reveal emotions about a topic. Adjectives sometimes require you to
open your eyes wider or make them look narrow to show your true
feelings….suprised or suspicious.
Common types of NMS:
1. Questions:
a. yes/no questions
b. longer yes/no questions
c. questions seeking information
2. Rhetorical Questions
3. Topicalization: topic/comment sentences
4. Conditional sentences
What type of eye contact and NMS do you need with each type?
1. maintain eye contact with the person to whom he/she is signing.
1a. you must have a raised eyebrow and tilt your head forward.
1b. if the sentence is longer, then you need to add the NMS at the END
of the sentences)
1c. squeeze the eyebrows and tilt the head forward.
2. maintain eye contact, raise the eyebrows, tilt the head forward,
hold the last sign of the rhetorical question slightly longer than the
other signs
3. maintain eye contact with the person being addressed, raise the
eyebrows and tilt the head slightly forward when signing the topic, hold
the last sign of the topic a little longer than the other signs and
pause slightly between signing the topic & comment.
4. NMS is required to alert the addressee to the stated condition. You
must have the eyebrows raised, the head tilted slightly to one side, the
last sign of the conditional clause held slightly longer than the other
signs & in some cases the body inclined forward.
Eyebrows mark the begninng and ending of utterances. Ex. Really, I
don’t know what you are talking about. Did she say that?
Eye gaze marks pronouns, utterance boundries and prominence. Ex. The
girl sat next to the boy. She batted her lashes at him and decided to
pass him a small note under the desk. He was stunned and wrote one for
her.
Eye blink/eye open: utterance boundries
Height: spatial pattern/prosody. Marks beginning and ending of
utterances
Shoulders up/down: creates visual pattern and rhythm