Sign Language Studies

We explored negative headshakes (NH) used by two native signers of ASL, using videotaped conversation and sentences constructed to elicit negative signalling, and found that NH: (1) are used syntactically to indicate negation, (2) may be accompanied by other nonmanual behaviors (which without the NH may signal negation), (3) may accompany a negative lexical item (but no negative sign was found to require a headshake), (4) and synchronize generally with syntactic constituents.