Rules of negation in British Sign Language

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The Syntax of British Sign Language

Assignment: two

Formulate three grammatical rules in the following area of BSL grammar: Negation. Discuss the impact of your chosen methodology upon your findings.

There are many languages in the world from spoken, signed, and written forms. Language is a code made up of a set of rules that include what words or signs mean. Individuals communicating with each other share it, and it allows them to exchange their thoughts and ideas. It can be expressed through writing, signing, or even gestures depending on an individual’s communication mode.

What is grammar? Grammar is the system of a language that sets out the rules that are followed by the users of the language. It is how words can be formed and put together and how sentences can be structured to convey meaning. It deals with the syntax and word order of a language and is a useful aid in the learning of a language.

Linguist can study any language, analyse it and tell us how it is built and structured. If we were to construct a sentence in a language, we would know if it was grammatically correct from this research from linguist and our prior knowledge of the language. Languages can be compared with each other to see what rules each of them have, to see if they are alike and whether they have the same characteristics.

Within this piece, we will look into negation. We will look at the rules of negation in English and how it is incorporated in the language. How negation is described in sign languages and look into current evidence of this through previous research to see what rules were established and whether they still apply. What methodology was used to create the rules and what effect this had on the research. We will also create three grammatical rules in British Sign Language (BSL) from our findings.

What do we understand of negation? Negation is a lexical item that expresses a negative clause in a sentence, which is a refusal or denial of some other statement used in language. By using a negative term in a sentence, we can negate it. “Negation is a grammatical construction…people who know a language know if a sentence has negation in it.” Sutton Spence and Woll (1999:72). All languages have the ability to incorporate negation. In English grammar, negatives are used in many different ways; this can be by adding additional words to a sentence, which can be known as negative verb forms. The word, ‘not,’ is added after an auxiliary verb to show negation, for example in the sentence, ‘I am working,’ we would say, ‘I am not working,’ to show negation. In addition, ‘she is coming,’ would become ‘she is not coming.’ It can also be shown by adding additional words to a sentence such as, ‘not, nothing, never,’ these are used to negate the sentence. They are known as negative lexical items, (NLI’s) which can be used before or after the verb, to include negation, in a sentence. For example, ‘I know nothing,’ ‘she’s not there,’ I never do homework.’ ‘I never go out,’ ‘she’s not going.’ Negation can also be shown in English by using negative pronouns such as, ‘nobody, none,’ ‘nobody likes the cold weather,’ ‘there are none in the jar.’ Affixes and suffixes, can be added to the beginning or the end of the word to give them a negative meaning, such as, ‘dis, un, less’. ‘She was so unhappy,’ ‘she disapproved of the way things were,’ ‘they were completely helpless.In English grammar, it is not acceptable to use double negatives, which are two negative words in the same sentence. However, it is still used by some individuals who use the language. It is said that when it is used it makes the sentence positive, for example, ‘I didn’t do nothing wrong,’ would be translated as, ‘I did something wrong.’ Although it is not accepted in English, many other languages use double negatives in their grammar. In French for example, the sentence, ‘Je ne mange jamais de nande.’ Translated would say, ‘I no eat never any meat.’ Meaning, ‘I am a vegetarian.’ This would be quite acceptable in their language and is also used in some other languages.

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English has grammar rules, which need to be followed to convey meaning in the language. Users of the language need to know these rules so they can understand it and use the language more effectively and in the correct manner without making mistakes. We have seen how English includes negatives in the language now we can look at these grammar rules and compare them to BSL, to establish if these rules exist in BSL and to find out how negation is incorporated in BSL.

We can find some of these negative rules in BSL which are expressed by ...

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