Head Thrust in ASL Conditional Marking

Scott K. Liddell

Sign Language Studies, Volume 52, Fall 1986, pp. 244-262 (Article)

Published by Gallaudet University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sls.1986.0003

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/507568/summary

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 SLS 52 Fall 1986

HEAD THRUST IN ASL CONDITIONAL MARKING

Scott K. Liddell

Abstract. A descriptive issue is addressed here. The

form of the nonmanual marking of conditionals
in ASL has been variously described, perhaps because of
variability in the data, but more likely because it is
difficult to pick out the recurrent nonmanual features
that are ever present in ASL signing. This paper
describes head thrust as a significant nonmanual signal,
which occurs on the final sign in a conditional clause,
in combination with a brow raise and a rotated head
position (found in other constituent markings). This
makes conditional marking in ASL unlike the other
grammatical signals involving a brow raise, because it
involves both a static configuration (brow raise and
head rotation) throughout the clause and a dynamic
movement of the head (head thrust) only during the
production of the final sign of the clause.

Nonmanual structure marking. Research focused on

nonmanual behaviors in
American Sign Language (ASL) has demonstrated the
correctness of Stokoe's original insight (1960) that the
key to understanding sentence structure was to be found
in the nonmanual behaviors that are a constant feature
of ASL usage. Arguments that nonmanual signals are more
than paralinguistic accompaniments to signing are
presented by Liddell (1977,1978, 1980), Baker (1983),
Baker & Padden (1978), and Coulter (1978); e.g. Liddell
proposes that the combination of raised eyebrows and a
forward head and body position throughout a clause will
mark it as a yes-no question (1977), and uses the symbol
1
q to represent that combination of nonmanual features.

(©) 1986 by Linstok Press, Inc. See inside front cover. ISSN 0302-1475
SLS 52 Liddell : 244 Fall 1986

q
1. MONEY USED-UP
'Is the money all gone?'

The line above the sign or sequence of signs is used to

represent the presence and duration of the nonmanual
signal designated by the superscript symbol. Since in 1.
the bar covers both signs it indicates that both signs
of this sequence are accompanied by the nonmanual
signal. In 2. the initial sign is accompanied by raised
eyebrows and a slight backward head tilt. This distinct
nonmanual signal marks the sign or phrase it accompanies
as a topic and is represented by the symbol t (Liddell
1977).

t
2. MONEY USED-UP
'The money, it is all used up.'

In both 1. and 2. the hands are producing the same

signs in the same order. Nevertheless the messages being
produced are quite different, not because of lexical
differences but because of the syntactic differences
between the two sentences. In 1. there is a simple
clause with subject and verb. In 2. MONEY is the topic
of the sentence and is structurally separate from the
main clause, which contains only the verb USED-UP. It is
possible to deduce these structural properties because
of what is known about the nature of these nonmanual
signals of ASL. They co-occur with each sign in the
constituent being marked by that nonmanual signal. Other
nonmanual signals that have been described also work
like t and q; i.e. the nonmanual signal is attached to a
specific sentence constituent and co-occurs with each
member of that constituent. In 1. the signal q could be
SLS 52 Liddell : 245 Fall 1986

represented structurally as a daughter of S because it

co-occurs with each sign that makes up the whole
constituent of S. In 2. t could be represented as a
daughter of the topic NP node, because it co-occurs with
one constituent; that topic constituent happens to
consist of only one sign, but topic phrases of more than
one sign are common.

t
3. RED CAR PRO.1 NOT-YET SELL
'That red car, I haven't sold it yet.'

This example demonstrates the general characteristic of

nonmanual signs just described; each member of the topic
constituent is accompanied by the nonmanual
configuration of brow raise and slight backward head
tilt, represented by t.

Nonmanual conditional marking. Baker and Padden were

the first to examine the
marking of conditional clauses in ASL (1978). They
report that a wide range of nonmanual activity is
present during the signing of conditional clauses and
claim that the syntactic markers that identify these
clauses as conditional consist of various configurations
of nonmanual activities. In their analysis there is no
single nonmanual behavior that marks a conditional:

In fact, it does not appear that any given nonmanual

behavior is absolutely critical in signalling the
initiation of a conditional or the termination of its
first clause. Rather, it seems that a signer may have
a preference for certain nonmanual behaviors and will
use those systematically, whereas another signer may
prefer a different configuration of behaviors to serve
the same purpose- (Baker & Cokely 1980: 32f)

They do describe a general pattern, however, in which

SLS 52 Liddell : 246 Fall 1986

the conditional clause is accompanied by a brow raise

(1978:33), and potentially some configuration of other
possible co-occurring nonmanual behaviors, including
nasolabial contraction, head nodding and shaking, and
various head positions.
Coulter also reports finding that the eyebrows must
be raised throughout the conditional clause, but in his
analysis the chin must also be raised (1978:67,
1979:24). If his "chin raised" is an alternate way of
describing a backward head tilt, the configuration he
describes is that designated by the symbol t introduced
above. There is no inconsistency in his claim that
conditionals in ASL are marked with the same nonmanual
signal used to mark topics, since in his analysis
conditionals are topics (1978:68).
Baker and Cokely present a third description of the
conditional nonmanual marker, which they label cond.
They describe it as composed of "a brow raise, usually
with the head tilted in one direction, and sometimes,
the body slightly inclined in one direction" (1980:141),
noting that it "includes the behavioral change at the
juncture" (143). These changes at the juncture of the
conditional clause with the following clause include a
pause, followed by brow lowering and a shift in the head
or body orientation (if the following clause is a
statement or command), or a higher raise of the eyebrows
with the head tilted toward the addressee and a
"widened" eye gaze (if the following clause is a yes-no
question). Thus, in their analysis, cond consists of a
set of nonmanual activities that occur during the
conditional plus another set of activities that occur at
the juncture between the conditional and the following
clause, and differ depending on whether the following
clause is a statement or command or a yes-no question.
Thus Baker and Padden (1978), Coulter (1978, 1979),
SLS 52 Liddell : 247 Fall 1986

and Baker and Cokely (1980) all report that a brow raise
is present throughout a conditional clause. They differ,
however, in their descriptions of the other nonmanual
features of conditional marking. These differences can
be seen in Table 1.

Form of conditional marking Source

raised brows (Baker & Padden 1978)

various other nonmanual actions
[no single marker]

raised brows (Coulter 1978)

raised chin

raised brows (Baker & Cokely 1980)

usually head tilt in one direc-
tion, sometimes body tilt in one
direction, changes at juncture
(including brow lowering, more
intense brow raise, and body shift

Table 1. Previous descriptions of conditional marking.

The variation in these claims about the form of the

nonmanual marking of conditionals raises some obvious
questions. What is responsible for this variation? Are
regional differences between signers responsible, or
individual differences (as claimed in Baker & Padden
1978)? Questions like these prompted me to gather a
sample of utterances containing conditionals so that I
could study the details of the nonmanual marking used.
SLS 52 Liddell : 248 Fall 1986

Brow raise in conditional marking. A corpus of forty-

one ASL sentences
containing conditional clauses was gathered to determine
what types of nonmanual accompaniments would be present.
Some of these sentences were elicited; others were
spontaneously produced. All were videotaped to permit
close examination of the nonmanual signals later. The
use of slow motion replay is essential in this type of
analysis, since it allows for quite precise descriptions
of nonmanual activities and their temporal relation in
the production of manual signs.
The following types of nonmanual behaviors were
commonly found with conditional clauses: brow raise, eye
gaze in different directions, body shifts of various
sorts, head tilted back, blinking at constituent
boundaries, and a wide range of head movements. Of these
types of nonmanual activity I found that a brow raise
was consistently present during the conditional clause.
This is also what Baker and Padden, Coulter, and Baker
and Cokely found. The following examples are typical:

brows-up
4. BORN GIRL NAME S-U-N-N-Y
'If it's a girl, Sunny will be her name.' 2

brows up
5. TOMORROW RAIN PICNIC CANCEL
'If it rains tomorrow, the picnic will be
cancelled.'

brows-up
6. APPEAR. STAY-SAME PRO.1 SLAP
1
'If he shows up as usual, I'll slap him.'

In examples 4.-6. a line appears above the signs that

SLS 52 Liddell : 249 Fall 1986

are accompanied by a brow raise. In each of these

examples the conditional is followed by another clause
that describes what will occur if the condition is met,
and in which the eyebrows are lowered. Thus at the
juncture between the clauses eyebrow lowering occurs.
There is no necessity to assume, as Baker and Cokely do
(1980:143), that the changes that take place at the
juncture are part of the conditional marking. At the
juncture of the conditional and the following clause the
signer merely carries out the nonmanual requirements of
the following clause. Brow lowering, for example, is not
a syntactic signal whose function it is to serve as a
conditional terminator. It is what signers do when the
second clause is to be signed without raised brows. In
7. below the conditional is followed by a yes-no
question, which also is produced with raised brows; the
brows therefore do not lower at the juncture of the
conditional and the following clause.

brows-up q

7. TOMORROW RAIN YOU GO SWIMMING BEACH YOU

'If it rains tomorrow, will you go swimming at the
beach?' (Baker & Padden 1978:32)

In cases like 7. where a conditional is followed by

a yes-no question, Baker and Cokely (1980:142) note that
the eyebrows are usually raised higher during the
following yes-no question than during the conditional.
Once again the extra intensity of the brow raise at the
juncture need not be analyzed as part of the conditional
marker; it also occurs, for example, when one yes-no
question follows another. The second yes-no question has
been observed to have a more intense brow raise than the
first (Liddell 1980:112).
In addition to conditional clauses, several other
SLS 52 Liddell : 250 Fall 1986

types of constituents are marked by nonmanual signals

that include raised brows as part of the nonmanual
configuration; _ marks a yes-no question, t marks a
topic, r marks a relative clause, and rhet.g marks a
rhetorical question. Signers have no trouble
distinguishing whether a yes-no question is being asked,
a topic is being raised, or a rhetorical question is
being asked.

Signal Nonmanual behavior Source

raised brows (Liddell 1977)

slight backward head tilt

raised brows (Liddell 1977)

head forward
body forward

raised brows (Baker 1983)

head forward
upper eyelid raise
gaze at addressee

raised brows (Liddell 1977)

backward head tilt
cheek and upper lip raise

rhet.q raised brows (Bake r & Cokely 1980)

freq. a head tilt

raised brows (Baker 1983)

head back/(side)
eye gaze at addressee

Table 2. Grammatical signals requiring raised brows.

SLS 52 Liddell : 251 Fall 1986

Signers also have no trouble distinguishing a

conditional clause in which the brows are raised from
any of the other constituent types involving raised
brows. Although all these nonmanual signals involve
raised eyebrows, they are nevertheless all perceptually
distinct. As can be seen in Table 2, the distinction
lies in the other things the signer is doing at the same
time.
Each of the nonmanual signals in Table 2 is
presented as a specific configuration of nonmanual
activities that continue throughout the constitutent
being marked. The nonmanual signal represented by the
symbol q, for example, does not consist of a significant
sequence of internal parts. A long yes-no question
simply extends the q configuration. The same is true for
other grammatical signals in Table 2.
My attempt to find a single unchanging configura-
tion of nonmanual activities accompanying all the
conditionals in my data produced results quite similar
to those reported in Baker and Padden and Baker and
Cokely. A brow raise was consistently present throughout
the conditionals in my data. Although backward head tilt
was common, it was often not present. However, some
degree of head rotation was consistently present in the
conditionals. Head rotation refers to either a leftward
or rightward rotation of the head. This often very
slight rotation causes the face to be oriented to the
left or right. This combination of nonmanual activities
seems to be highly similar to the description proposed
by Baker and Cokely for rhetorical questions (Table 2).
But the nonmanual marking for conditionals looks
different from rhet.q and all the other signals listed
in Table 2. If the nonmanual marking for conditionals is
distinct from the signals in Table 2 that also have
SLS 52 Liddell : 252 Fall 1986

raised brows, and if the distinctiveness of that marking

is not to be found in a continuous configuration of
nonmanual activities, this still leaves open the
possibility that conditionals are distinctively marked,
but by something other than a single unchanging
configuration of nonmanual behaviors.

Head thrust. I will use the term head thrust to

refer to a single outward and downward
movement of the head. Head thrust was consistently
present in my corpus of ASL conditionals. Examples 4. to
6. above are presented again below with head rotation
left and right indicated by the symbol rot-L or rot-R
and head thrust by the symbol ht.

ht
rot-R
brows up
4'- BORN GIRL NAME S-U-N-N-Y
'If it's a girl her name will be Sunny.'

ht
rot-R
brows-up
5'. TOMORROW RAIN PICNIC CANCEL
'If it rains tomorrow no picnic.'

ht
rot-R
brows-up
6'. APPEAR STAY-SAME PRO.1 SLAP
'If he shows up like he did before,
I'll slap him.'
SLS 52 Liddell : 253 Fall 1986

Figure 1. A conditional clause without a topic.

SLS 52 Liddell : 254 Fall 1986

The nonmanual features described above for 6'- can

be clearly seen in Figure 1; the head is rotated
slightly to the right during SHOW-UP and maintains that
degree of rotation during STAY-SAME, even though the
head is thrust forward and down. This also illustrates
another important aspect of head thrust. It is only
present during the final sign of the conditional.
The degree of head rotation does not seem to be
significant.3 Some examples begin with only a slight
degree of head rotation, which becomes more pronounced
by the time the conditional is complete. Head thrust
even appears in combination with a negative headshake:

ht
brows up
t n

8. JOHN SHOW - UP THINK SELF

'As for John, if he doesn't show up, use your own
judgment.'

Head rotation is not indicated in 8. because of the side

to side movement imposed by the nonmanual signal n. When
a conditional includes a negative headshake (n), there
is an interesting interaction between the side to side
headshake found in n and the single forward head
movement required by ht. In my data the head may still
be moving to one side when the head thrust begins, but
once the head thrust has terminated the head shaking
also terminates. The result is a forward position of the
head with the head turned to one side. Compare this with
the following example of a simple case of headshake
negation:

t n 'As for the cat,

9. CAT DOG CHASE the dog didn't chase it.'
SLS 52 Liddell : 255 Fall 1986

In an example like this the side-to-side headshake can

continue even after the hands have stopped signing.
Interactions such as this help to demonstrate the
abstract nature of the nonmanual notations that appear
over the English glosses of ASL sign strings.

Distinctive conditional marking. In the data I have

examined, the combin-
ation of a brow raise and rotated head position through-
out the conditional, and the head thrust during the
final sign, are the nonmanual activities used to mark a
conditional constituent. This type of marking is unlike
all the nonmanual signals in Table 1, in that it is not
a uniform configuration but is that plus a single
activity occurring only during the final sign in the
conditional.
There is good reason to believe that the videotaped
data I gathered is similar to the data gathered by
others. Baker and Cokely include a photograph of a
signer executing a conditional (1980:16). The signer's
head is rotated to the right, the brows are raised, and
the head is in a thrust forward position. Thus, all
three of the characteristics of conditionals that I
found in my data are present in that photograph.
I have refrained from using the notation cond
proposed as a marker for conditionals in Baker and
Cokely (1980), because their description of what cond
means differs considerable from the description being
presented here.

Conditionals & topics. Coulter (1978) analyzed a

number of constructions in ASL,
all of which are produced with raised brows. He found no
differences between the form of conditionals and the
SLS 52 Liddell : 256 Fall 1986

form of "when," "goal," and "topic" constructions.

Examples of when and goal cosntructions from Coulter
(1978) are illustrated below:

brows up
when JOHN ARRIVE CAN LEAVE
'When John arrives we can leave.'

brows up
goal FIX THAT FIRST MUST DISCONNECT
'To fix that you have to disconnect it first.'

Coulter observes that conditional, topic, when, and

goal constructions all refer to background information
and that none of these constructions make assertions. He
concludes that these are not four distinct constructions
but that all are examples of a single syntactic
construction. Since in his analysis there is no distinct
marking for conditional versus topic, the interpretation
of the function of the construction has to depend on the
context in which it appears.
In the previous section, however, I argue that the
nonmanual markings for topics and conditionals are
distinct from one another. A second difference between
conditionals and topics is their ability to co-occur
with a negative headshake. Conditionals allow a negative
headshake to occur with their nonmanual marking, but
topics do not.

t
10. RED CAR PRO.1 SELL
'The red car, I sold it.'
SLS 52 Liddell : 257 Fall 1986

[Not grammatical in ASL

n
t
11. RED CAR PRO.1 SELL
'The not red car, I sold it.']

The single difference between 10. and 11. is the

presence of the negative headshake during the (manual
and nonmanual) presentation of the topic in 11. Although
topics do not allow a negative headshake, conditionals
do accept them.

ht
brows up
t n
12. JOHN SHOW - UP THINK SELF
'As for John, if he desn't show up, use your own
judgment.'

As a result of these differences, it is no longer

clear what eveidence there is in favor of considering
conditionals in ASL to be topic constructions. They are
marked differently, interpreted differently, and have
different co-occurrence restrictions.
In spite of the fact that the form of the
nonmanual markings for conditionals and topics are
distinct, they nevertheless share the feature brow
raise. As a result, if a conditional were preceded by a
topic, the brow raise would continue throughout both. In
addition, conditionals are often produced with a
backward head tilt (at least prior to the head thrust).
This might make it seem that there would be no obvious
boundary between the two. In my data, however, the two
types of constituents in sequence are generally still
distinguishable. In an example like 8. above, the
SLS 52 Liddell : 258 Fall 1986

separation is easy because only the conditional is

marked with the nonmanual grammatical signal n (negative
headshake). The examples below are more difficult.

t -br-ht
13. TEST GET-A PRO.1 RELIEVED PRO.1
1
'The test -- if I get an A on it I'll be relieved.'
t br-ht
14. J-O-H-N K-ErN-N-E-D-Y STILL LIVE WELL AMERICA
LOOK LIKE WELL
'As for JFK, if he were still alive, what would
America be like?'

t br-ht
15. CAR 1984 DIA-T-S-U-N ARRIVE. PRO.1 READY BUY
1
PRO.1
'As for the car, a 1984 Datsun, if it arrives I am
ready tb buy it.'

The ways that tVe topics in 10.-12. are distinguished

from the conditibnals in 13.-15. are typical of other
examples in my data. In 10. the face and eye gaze are
forward during TEST, but head rotation was to the left
during the sign GET-A.1 . In 14. the same head rotation
differences were present, and in addition there were
repeated small head nods between the topic and the
conditional. In 15. the topic itself appears to be made
up of two parts. During the sign CAR the head is
oriented forward, but the head rotates slightly to the
left beginning at the sign 1984 and maintains that
leftward orientation until the end of the topic. The
slightly rotated head position beginning with the sign
1984 indicates that the topic itself has two distinct
parts. At the beginning of the conditional the head
turns again, this time to the right with widened eyes.
SLS 52 Liddell : 259 Fall 1986

In each of these examples the head orientation in the

conditional is different from the head orientation in
the topic. An even more complicated example is the
following:

t br-ht t

16. TEST GET-A PART B NOT-HAVE-TO STUDY PRO.2

n
NOT-HAVE-TO
'The test, if you get an A on it, then as for
part B, you won't have to study it.'

\ NOT-HAVE-TO TD1 )Uly

Figure 2. A conditional clause preceded by a topic,
SLS 52 Liddell : 260 Fall 1986

The relevant portions of this example are

illustrated in Figure 2. The first sign, TEST, is a
topic and is signed with-the nonmanual signal t. The
second sign shows the rotated head and head thrust
position described above. In contrast to Figure 1 (a
two-sign conditional with a brow raise and head rotation
for both signs), the sign TEST here does not show that
rotated head position. I interpret this to mean that
TEST is not part of the conditional clause but is a
one-sign topic. If this is correct, then GET-A is a one-
sign conditional marked with a brow raise, rotated head,
and, because it is the only and hence the last sign of
the conditional, also a head thrust. The phrase PART B
is a second topic, also marked with the nonmanual signal
noted as t. Thus there are two separate clauses here,
each preceded by its own topic.
Data examined here appears to show that head thrust
is a part of the nonmanual marking of conditional
clauses only.

NOTES

1. The description above is presented in Liddell (1977)

as the non-reduced form of that nonmanual signal, with
the suggestion that nonmanual signals, like words, can
undergo reduction in casual or rapid discourse.
Nonmanual yes-no question markers without that forward
body position were regarded as reduced forms of g. Baker
(1983) reports that of the 16 simple yes-no questions
she looked at only one included a forward torso lean.
Whether the lack of a forward lean in her data is due to
rapid, informal signing or represents a need to revise
the description of q is not clear at present.

2. ASL has a nominal sign meaning 'name' and a related

verb sign meaning 'to name'. The sign used in this
example is the noun. This sentence followed a brief
description of having already picked two names, and
informs us of which name is the girl's name.

3. Some examples begin with only a slight degree of head

rotation, which becomes more pronounced by the time the
conditional is complete.
 SLS 52 Liddell : 261 Fall7 1986

4. This still leaves the question of whether there is

any distinction between "in-order-to" and "when"
constructions on the one hand, and conditionals and
topics on the other. Within the small sample of
in-order-to and when constructions that I have gathered,
both types of constructions seem to be distinct from
topic constructions. The when-clauses appeared to be
marked with raised brows and a head thrust (just as the
conditionals are marked), and the in-order-to
constructions had raised brows.

I wish also to thank Clayton Valli and Minnie Mae

Wilding, who provided the ASL data videotaped for
analysis, Paul M. Setzer, who drew the illustrations in
Figures 1 and 2, and Robert E. Johnson for his useful
comments on an earlier version of this paper.

REFERENCES

[Baker, C.
1983 An microanalysis of the nonmanual components of
questions in ASL. Unpublished dissertation,
University of California, Berkeley.]
Baker, C. & C. Padden
1978 Focusing on the nonmanual components of ASL. In
Siple (ed.), 27-57.
Baker, C. & D. Cokely
1980 American Sign Language: A Teacher's Resource Text
on Grammar & Culture. Silver Spring, MD: T. J.
Publishers.
Coulter, G.
1978 Raised eyebrows & wrinkled noses: the function of
facial expression in relative clauses & related
constructions. In Proceedings of the Second
National Symposium on Sign Language Research &
Teaching, Caccamise ed. Silver Spring, MD:
National Association of the Deaf.
[Coulter, G.
1979 American Sign Language typology. Unpublished
dissertation, University of California, San
Diego.]
[Liddell, S.
1977 An investigation into the syntactic structure of
ASL. Unpublished dissertation, University of
California, San Diego.]
Liddell, S.
1978 Nonmanual signals & relative clauses in ASL. In
Siple (ed.).
Liddell, S.
1980 American Sign Language Syntax. The Hague: Mouton.
SLS 52 Liddell : 262 Fall 1986

Siple, P. (ed.)
1978 Understanding Language through Sign Language
Research. New York: Academic Press.
Stokoe, W.
1960 Sign Language Structure (Studies in Linguistics:
Occasional Papers, 8). [Revised, 1978. Silver
Spring, MD: Linstok Press].

Scott K. Liddell received his Ph.D. degree in

linguistics from the University of California, San Diego
in 1977. He is an Assistant Professor in the Linguistics
Department of Gallaudet College. With a major research
interest in the grammar of American Sign Language, he
has published a book on ASL syntax and several articles
recently on sequentiality in ASL phonology.