Verbs & Inflectional Adverbs
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This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 10 Jun 2018, 03:54.
[comments] wssverbgrammar
1. Pronouns
2. Romanization
?FYI...
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
[top]Verbs
Verbs are things that describe an action. Except when they don't. If you say 'he looks good,' 'he' is the subject and 'looks' is the verb, but it doesn't really describe an action. Unless you consider looking good to be an action. Is it an action? Verbs are weird. Language is weird.
Let's start over.
Verbs are things that act like verbs.
[top]Things That Act Like Verbs
In Wondrish Sign Language, a lot of words can act like verbs. With no copula and little inflectional morphology, there are a lot of instances where adjectives and nouns can appear in places where they could act like a verb. If you sign:
'WHITE' would normally be an adjective, and one could very well consider it to be an adjective in this instance. But it appears where a verb could be, and there are no affixes or forms of agreement that would necessarily say 'this word is an adjective.' The action it describes--being white in color--requires as much effort as the guy who was 'looking good' in our previous example.*
The same could be said of
'MOTHER,' usually a noun, appears in the place where a verb would be. It could be argued that the 'action' being described is 'being a mother.'
We bring this up because there are occasions when inflections that are applied to verbs can be applied to adjectives or nouns. For example, the modification that shows that the action is arduous could be applied to the adjective 'HUNGRY' or the noun 'STUDENT.'
*Okay, admittedly he might have put a lot of work into it at some earlier point in time, but the point still stands.
[top]Inflectional & Facial Adverbs
Inflectional adverbs are inflections on verbs that modify the verb in ways that an adverb might. The tell you how an action (or non-action) is being performed.
Here is a list of some inflectional adverbs and how they are shown, which is by no means exhaustive.
| Verb performed while happily, sadly, angrily, timidly, etc. | Show the emotion with your face. |
|---|---|
| Verb performed repeatedly. | Sign performed repeatedly. |
| Verb is arduous, performed over a long period of time. | Sign performed repeatedly with sharp movements. Signs may be simplified--in 'PLANT,' for example, the circular movement is removed from the sign, in 'BUILD,' the hands do not move back to the shoulders. |
| Verb performed carelessly or incompetently. | Eyes wide, frowning. Sign produced erratically, to the point that hands that are meant to 'mirror' one another may not be synced up. |
| Verb performed awkwardly. | Eyes wide, lips pressed together. Sign produced very deliberately, prolonging holds or inserting holds where there are none. |
[top]Spatial Inflections
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