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ASL Grammar (19)

 Fingerspelling more than one word

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Also see: Inflection

 

Topic: The spelling of two or more words.

Question:
When spelling two or more words should you change your hand position for the second word?

Answer:
When spelling two or more words in succession you can either do a micro pause or (optionally) do a small position shift between words.  If you choose to do a position shift the shift should be toward the right similar to how written English is read from left to right. If you do a second word further to the left (particularly if you are right handed) it looks a bit odd. (Unless you are resetting your hand position as would occur in situations requiring the spelling of multiple multi-word items such as when spelling a list of first and last names).
 

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Topic: The sign "NAME" and the breaking of the noun/verb pair movement rule.

Doing the sign for NAME with a single movement when introducing yourself is actually an indication that you have practiced enough to become at least somewhat comfortable introducing yourself.

Even though the noun version of NAME is often taught as having two movements -- the real life signing of "MY NAME" often only uses one movement for NAME. (Which is often taught as being the verb version of "name" as in "called / named / christened."

The point here is that even though NAME-noun / NAME-verb is a noun/verb pair -- in real life signing we often do not follow the "nouns use a repeated movement" rule for the noun version of NAME -- and instead simply do the noun (in context) using one movement -- and are understood by our conversation partner or audience.

Either the possessive MY or the index "I/ME" works fine in when introducing yourself:

Acceptable:
MY NAME _____
I/ME NAME ____
I/ME _____

Not acceptable:
MY _____

Specific examples:
Acceptable:
MY NAME fs-BOB
I/ME NAME fs-BOB
I/ME fs-BOB

Not acceptable:
MY fs-BOB
 

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Notes: 
There is a difference between a shortcut and concentrated effort.  You can expedite or accelerate the learning of ASL by having more conversations, more often.  If you have ten ASL conversations a day you will certainly learn ASL faster than someone who is only having "one" ASL conversation a day.  This is not a shortcut this is simply doing ten times the work in the same span of time.

 

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