In ASL, eye gaze functions to do which of the following in discourse?

• A. Index a third-person location syntactically
• B. Indicate verb tense
• C. Mark negation
• D. Show emphasis on signs

Answer: (A)

Eye gaze in ASL is a tool for mapping discourse onto the signing space by indexing third-person referents. You place a person or object at a specific location in the signing space and direct your gaze to that location while signing about them. This helps keep track of who is involved across clauses, because subsequent signs or directional verbs can point back to that location to show the relationship between actions and the referent. Tense is usually shown with time signs or aspect markers, negation with facial expressions or mouth morphemes, and emphasis with facial intensity or repetition—gaze, in this context, primarily serves to anchor third-person references in space, making it the best fit.