nonmanuals
Nonmanuals are the facial expressions, head movements, eye gaze, mouth shapes, and upper-body postures used in sign languages alongside manual signs. They carry grammatical, pragmatic, and discourse information that complements the hand signs, and in many cases are essential to expressing a sentence’s meaning or function. Nonmanuals can signal sentence type, scope, negation, aspect, modality, and focus, and they often help distinguish similar signs with different grammatical roles.
Typical nonmanual markers include facial expressions such as eyebrow configuration, eye emphasis, mouth shapes, and cheek
In signing communities and linguistics, nonmanuals are studied as a core component of sign language grammar.
Educational and interpretive practice emphasizes accurate observation and production of nonmanuals, since misreading them can lead