Answer:
Process of establishing the topic at the beginning of a sentence with non-manual expression.
Explanation:
The basic word order in English is SVO: subject - verb - object. An example of a typical sentence in English is: John likes apples. John is the subject, likes is the verb, and apples are the object. While many languages have flexible word order, SVO order in English is very rigid, and other word orders often sound unnatural.
Linguistic term topicalization refers to the establishment of a topic at the beginning of a sentence, instead of the end. The sentence John likes apples after topicalization would be Apples John likes. This is the OSV (object - subject - verb) word order, which is very common in American Sign Language. During the construction of an OSV sentence, the non-manual signal is raised eyebrows and head tilted forward at the beginning of the sentence (the object). Then it's proceeded with the rest of the sentence (the subject and the verb).
