The present thesis consists of six studies in Swedish Sign Language, the primary language of the Swedish deaf community. Unlike spoken language, which is vocal-auditive with respect to manner of production and perception, signed language is gestural-visual. Due to the differences in modality signed language - in addition to being linear and arbitrary - is also characterized by properties such as simultaneity, spatiality and iconicity. This applies to the sign as well as the sentence.
One paper deals with classification of signs. According to the relation between the form of the sign and the referent, signs are classified as either arbitrary or motivated, the latter type consisting of deictic and iconic forms. Further subclassification is made with reference to the role of the articulation (movement) of the sign which may depict a shape, a movement or a relation. This model also distinguishes between direct and indirect motivation. Indirectly motivated forms are related to the referent via a base concept as in ELEPHANT in which the form depicts the shape of a trunk.
Another aspect of sign formation is described in a paper dealing with five morphological processes: A preliminary analysis suggests that these formational changes, when operating on verbal and adjectival predicates, are modulations for aspect, reciprocity and degree.
Two studies deal with syntactic processes. One focusses on iconic and arbitrary use of space in localisation, i. e. how and where the referents of the arguments are assigned positions in front of the signer's body. The case is pleaded for the necessity of using motivational criteria when describing sign classes with respect to direct and indirect localisation of signs.
The second syntactic study describes non-manual grammatical signals marking different types of sentences such as yes/no-questions, wh-questions, negated and conditional sentences.
Two systems for transcribing sign language are introduced: one system for transcription of the manually produced component of the sign; and one for transcribing whole utterances including information on non-manual articulators (body, head, mouth, eyes, eye-brows).