Words in Hand

OK, now we are going to give some explanation of how we think non-manual features work in language. Let us look first at the two main groups of non-manual features.

What do we mean by the big heading 'non-manual features'? Well, obviously we mean all the body movements that's not part of the hands. So it may be shoulders, or it may be the head movements, or it may be the mouth or cheeks or the eyes.

As you can imagine, there's lots of variations we can make, and lots of different combinations. So I could have the head down and eyes closed, like this. Or my head up and my eyes up, like this, and my mouth may be open.

So what we are going to try and do in the next couple of tapes is look at some of the different uses those non-manual features have in the language. In fact, there are many different uses of non-manual features (NMF) that can be used to show questions in sign language, to show negatives, and it can show the beginning and end of a sentence. It can also show the topic of a sentence. But for the moment we will ignore all of that and we will concentrate on individual signs.

We are going to look at two different groups.

The first group are what we call multi-channel signs. What does this mean? These signs normally must have both the hand and face combined, and maybe the body too, put together.

So in the graphic you saw this sign. Now, if I did that sign without the face – like this – it means nothing and deaf people will be like: What are you talking about?! You're talking rubbish. But if I add the facial information, it's a clearly recognisable sign, like this. So that is an example of what we call a multi-channel sign.

The other group is what we call non- (sorry!) non-manual modifications.

You can see there, you can see what is used in the graphic, is the sign 'object'. Now it's possible to do that sign in a number of different ways. I don't have to sign it with puffed cheeks – I can sign it like this instead. In the graphic you saw the use of puffed cheeks to emphasise that you really object, like this. Now, that modification is something added from the face to that sign itself, and it gives us extra information about that.

So what we are going to see in the examples in the rest of this tape are signs we might know already – signs like 'work' and 'talk' – that can be changed by adding information from the face. Actually, most of those examples we are going to look at in the second tape on non-manual features. But for what is left in the rest of this tape, we are going to look mainly at what is called multi-channel signs.

Now I think I'll ask Gerry to explain and demonstrate some examples.