Aural Rehabilitation Exam 2 Practice Test 2026 - Free Aural Rehabilitation Practice Questions and Study Guide

In ASL, prosody is carried by non-manual signals like facial expressions, head tilts, body movement, and eye gaze. These visual cues take the place of vocal intonation and rhythm in spoken languages, giving information about sentence type, emphasis, emotion, and discourse flow. Facial expressions—such as the brow position, eye shape, and mouth movements—help indicate yes/no versus WH- questions, convey intensity or contrast, and mark grammatical nuances. Head tilts and shoulder or body movements help show focus and boundaries between signs, while eye gaze guides referents and signals topic continuation or shifts.

Breath control isn’t the primary way ASL conveys prosody; it’s not how meaning is built into signing. Grammar rules describe how signs are organized linguistically, not how prosodic meaning is expressed. Volume and pitch are audible features of spoken language, and signing relies on visual-manual signals rather than vocal prosody, so those elements don’t capture the core way prosody is conveyed in ASL.