• Instructions
  • 0.0. Instructions
• Unit 1
  • 1.1. Definition of a Deaf Person
  • 1.2. Are all Deaf People Alike?
  • 1.3. What is the Deaf Community?
  • 1.4. Communication Guidelines
  • 1.5. Self-evaluation
  • 1.6. More resources
• Unit 2
  • 2.1. What is Sign Language?
  • 2.2. The Concept of Signs
  • 2.3. Signs from Within: parameters of sign forming
  • 2.4. Sign Language Articulators
  • 2.5. Hand Alphabet
  • 2.6. Self-evaluation
  • 2.7. More resources
• Unit 3
  • 3.1. Greetings and Showing Appreciation
  • 3.2. Introducing Ourselves
  • 3.3. Affirmations and Negations
  • 3.4. Colours
  • 3.5. Self-evaluation
  • 3.6. More resources
• Unit 4
  • 4.1. The Expression of Time
  • 4.2. Cardinal Numbers
  • 4.3. The Family
  • 4.4. Self-evaluation
  • 4.5. More resources
• Unit 5
  • 5.1. LSC Verbs
  • 5.2. Basic Sentence Structure in LSC
  • 5.3. Affirmative Phrases in LSC
  • 5.4. Negative Phrases in LSC
  • 5.5. Interrogative Phrases in LSC
  • 5.6. Self-evaluation
  • 5.7. More resources
• Unit 6
  • 6.1. Students
  • 6.2. Services and administration workers (PAS)
  • 6.3. Professors
  • 6.4. External services workers
  • 6.5. Self-evaluation
  • 6.6. More resources

5.2. Basic Sentence Structure in LSC

All languages use three basic elements to construct a sentence:

• Subject
• Predicate
• Object

In Catalan, Spanish and English the basic order of a sentence is Subject–Verb-Object (SVO). LSC’s basic order is different however and depends on the nature of the verb, as we will see below.

Some verbs already include subject and object and therefore there is no need to specify them. Let’s look at this verb:

I explain to you

In this sentence the subject is implicit since it is the signer who is doing the action. The object is also implicit since the signer points directly to the addressee, the person receiving the action.

This basic order of components in LSC, mentioned at the beginning of this section, will be our reference. We will now see how this order can be altered to represent affirmative, negative or interrogative phrases. Let’s look at each of these types of phrases.