Description

Research on nonmanual elements - or 'nonmanuals' - in sign languages has focused on both the possible functions and the occurrence (frequency and form) of these elements in recent years. As a matter of fact, research on nonmanuals is still a quite uncharted territory in Austrian Sign Language ( GS) today, which has also initiated the study given.

In order to identify head and body movements in GS, these nonmanuals were determined and analyzed functionally via a new user-oriented methodology. Getting feedback of multiple native signers was a main part of this method. Accordingly, you will find the findings of this study in this volume: various functions such as negation, assertion, interrogativity, conditionality, and many more can be expressed nonmanually. Brand new insights into sign language research are given, as well as astonishing results: even (epistemic) modality can be expressed by particular head and body movements.