English Spoken Language

Spoken language has free and bound morpheme, sign language has free morpheme as lexical signs and bound morphemes as conventionalised use of parameters. Handshape tends to be part of the lexical (free) morpheme, and are less common as a bound morpheme. Hands can create a huge range of other shapes. This is important as the meaning of the signs can change.Locations, sometimes combined with movement, can function as morphemes. Users of signed languages use only those parts of the body and locations in space that fall into signing space. The signing space refers to an area which extends vertically from approximately just above the head to the waist, and horizontally from elbow to elbow when the arms are held loosely bent in front of the body.