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the syntax of american sign language functional categories and hierarchical structure
p recent research on the syntax of signed languages has revealed that apart from some modality specific differences signed languages are organized according to the same underlying principles as spoken languages . this book addresses the organization and distribution of functional categories in american sign language asl focusing on tense agreement and wh constructions.signed languages provide illuminating evidence about functional projections of a kind unavailable in the study of spoken languages . along with manual signing crucial information is expressed by specific movements of the face and upper body . the authors argue that such nonmanual markings are often direct expressions of abstract syntactic features . the distribution and intensity of these markings provide information about the location of functional heads and the boundaries of functional projections . the authors show how evidence from asl is useful for evaluating a number of recent theoretical proposals on among other things the status of syntactic agreement projections and constraints on phrase structure and the directionality of movement .