Language Awareness and Analysis
Domain 7: Language Awareness and Analysis
This domain tests comparison between signed and spoken language structures. You need to analyse NSL as a natural language with its own phonology, morphology and syntax, and avoid treating it as pantomime or as a manual code for English.
Core rules
- Sign phonology uses parameters such as handshape, location, movement, orientation and non-manual features. Changing one parameter can change meaning.
- Sign morphology can be simultaneous: a single sign may carry person, number, aspect or manner through movement and non-manual Features.
- Signed syntax often uses space and topic-comment order, while English uses word order and auxiliaries. The two systems organise information differently.
- Iconicity is common but not universal. A sign may look motivated yet still be conventional and language-specific.
- Spoken languages use intonation; signed languages use brow, head, eye and mouth patterns for similar grammatical work.
Worked example
Compare English 'Have you eaten?' with an NSL equivalent. English marks the question through auxiliary inversion. NSL may sign EAT with raised brows, a head tilt and a held final sign, without an auxiliary. Reasoning: the question is marked non-manually and perhaps by order, not by a copied English auxiliary. A word-for-word gloss such as 'YOU HAVE EATEN' would misrepresent the grammar. The comparison shows that both languages mark interrogation, but with different resources.
Traps
- Assuming one sign equals one word.
- Calling classifiers 'just description' rather than grammar.
- Assuming iconicity makes a sign universally understood.
- Forcing English word order onto NSL.
- Ignoring mouth patterns and other non-manual components.