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Morphemes in ASL
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Morphemes in ASL
Phonemes
Sentence Structure, Hand Shapes, and Simplicity
Facial Expressions
Contrastive Structure and Spacial Agreement
Signing Numbers and Time Signs
Classifiers in ASL

Morphology: study of the smallest unit of meaning



Morphemes: the smallest unit of meaning



A combination of morphemes can have different meanings than the individual parts.

Ex:



Butter fly (2 morphemes)



Lov ing (2 morphemes)



Un predict able (3 morphemes)

Use of sign space - provides meaning; if it is big or small, etc.






An example of morphemes in ASL is the er hand movement that one adds to differ between a verb, and the one who performs the verb.

teach then add the er morpheme (see video) and teach becomes teacher


measure is one sign by its self, which, when you add the er morpheme, it becomes measurer or, really, engineer.


By adding the ER, it allows the word to become a profession.
This structure is utilized in the word computer program, when the ER is added, it becomes computer programmer.

videoicon.jpg

click here to play video