SiL
examples
Linguistic examples
Phonology
Phonology is the study of how words are created from formational units. For signed languages, those units include how active articulators (hands) interact with passive articulators (sometimes the other hand/arm, body locations, space) an dhow they're configured, e.g., hand configurations, placement, contact. Phonologists are interested in how these units can (and cannot) be combined. And also what happens to them when they are produced next to other words (lots of funny things can happen).
In this section, you'll find lots of examples related to phonological processes (or alternations) - which are processes that happen to signs when they are used with other signs in everyday signing.
Morphology
No video examples yet!
Morphology is the study of the smallest meaningful units in language. That means we are interested in how words are formed (word formation or derivational morphology) or modified (word modification or inflectional morphology).
In this section, there will be video examples that demonstrate both kinds of processes.
Syntax
No video examples yet!
Syntax is the study of phrases and sentences. When we study this, we are looking at how words are combined together into larger units (phrases and sentences).
In this section, there will be examples of sentence types, word order, and grammatical classes.
Discourse
No video examples yet!
Discourse is the study of how language is actually used. For example, linguists can look at how language is used in particular social situations.
In this section, we will show different types of texts (language in use) and briefly discuss the features that characterize each.