Editing American Sign Language (section)

=== Syntax ===
ASL is a [[subject–verb–object]] (SVO) language, but various phenomena affect that basic word order.<ref name="Neidle 2000 59">{{cite book|last=Neidle|first=Carol|title=The Syntax of American Sign Language: Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structures|year=2000|publisher=The MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=978-0-262-14067-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/syntaxofamerican00caro/page/59 59]|url=https://archive.org/details/syntaxofamerican00caro/page/59}}</ref> Basic SVO sentences are signed without any pauses:<ref name="Valli 2005 84">{{cite book|title=Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction|last=Valli|first=Clayton|publisher=Clerc Books|year=2005|isbn=978-1-56368-283-4|location=Washington, D.C.|page=169}}</ref>

{{interlinear|lang=ase|indent=3
|FATHER LOVE CHILD
|"The father loves the child."<ref name="Valli 2005 84"/>}}

However, other word orders may also occur since ASL allows the [[topic (linguistics)|topic]] of a sentence to be moved to sentence-initial position, a phenomenon known as [[topicalization]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Valli|first=Clayton|title=Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction|year=2005|publisher=Clerc Books|location=Washington, D.C.|isbn=978-1-56368-283-4|page=85}}</ref> In [[object–subject–verb]] (OSV) sentences, the object is topicalized, marked by a forward head-tilt and a pause:<ref name="Valli 2005 86">{{cite book|last=Valli|first=Clayton|title=Linguistics of American Sign Language: An Introduction|year=2005|publisher=Clerc Books|location=Washington, D.C.|isbn=978-1-56368-283-4|page=86}}</ref>

{{interlinear|lang=ase|indent=3
|CHILD<sup>topic</sup>, FATHER LOVE
|"The father loves the child."<ref name="Valli 2005 86"/>}}

Besides, word orders can be obtained through the phenomenon of subject copy in which the subject is repeated at the end of the sentence, accompanied by head nodding for clarification or emphasis:<ref name="Valli 2005 84"/>

{{interlinear|lang=ase|indent=3
|FATHER LOVE CHILD FATHER<sup>copy</sup>
|"The father loves the child."<ref name="Valli 2005 84"/>}}

ASL also allows [[null subject]] sentences whose subject is implied, rather than stated explicitly. Subjects can be copied even in a null subject sentence, and the subject is then omitted from its original position, yielding a [[verb–object–subject]] (VOS) construction:<ref name="Valli 2005 86"/>

{{interlinear|lang=ase|indent=3
|LOVE CHILD FATHER<sup>copy</sup>
|"The father loves the child."<ref name="Valli 2005 86"/>}}

Topicalization, accompanied with a null subject and a subject copy, can produce yet another word order, [[object–verb–subject]] (OVS).

{{interlinear|lang=ase|indent=3
|CHILD<sup>topic</sup>, LOVE FATHER<sup>copy</sup>
|"The father loves the child."<ref name="Valli 2005 86"/>}}

Those properties of ASL allow it a variety of word orders, leading many to question which is the true, underlying, "basic" order. There are several other proposals that attempt to account for the flexibility of word order in ASL. One proposal is that languages like ASL are best described with a [[topic–comment]] structure whose words are ordered by their importance in the sentence, rather than by their syntactic properties.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lillo-Martin|first=Diane|title=Two Kinds of Null Arguments in American Sign Language|journal=Natural Language and Linguistic Theory|date=November 1986|volume=4|issue=4|page=415|doi=10.1007/bf00134469|s2cid=170784826 }}</ref> Another hypothesis is that ASL exhibits [[free word order]], in which syntax is not encoded in word order but can be encoded by other means such as head nods, eyebrow movement, and body position.<ref name="Neidle 2000 59"/>