Adjectives most often follow nouns. Thus the English phrase "an old book" is rendered in ASL as "a book old." This is the influence of Old French Sign Language (OFSL), upon which much of ASL rests. (The first formal instruction of deaf American children was provided by a deaf Frenchman, Laurent Clerc, who left his native land to open a school for his American counterparts in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817.)
