Rhetorical questions and ASL

BEG has an excellent book that I still have to buy; I'm going to order it this weekend from a local bookstore, the ASL Phrasebook. I paged through it when we went to that Silent Weekend a while back (the one where we almost got snowed in *ARGH*).

That book went over one of the most common devices in ASL: rhetorical questions. And it's occurring to me how thoroughly the concept of rhetorical questions are soaked into the language, and that I'm going to have to get used to that to move forward. A lot of the concepts that are puzzling me as to how to get them across in ASL can be addressed by this device. Interestingly, a lot of nonspatial prepositions are very nicely put using this device.

"I stayed home from school because it was raining."

SCHOOL I NOT GO WHY? RAIN.

"I had a burger for lunch."

MY LUNCH WHAT? BURGER.

There are also ways in which the verb "to be" is communicated, one way in an equative fashion by setting up two things in space and then doing the "same as" hand between them, and the other by saying one thing WHAT? the other.

I'm still getting used to it, and it takes a bit of a mental shift to deal with it, but it's really a very nice way to get those sorts of things across. I'm also looking forward to learning the language enough to determine when one or the other is appropriate, like when you use the active/auxiliary and equative forms of "to be" in Welsh, or "ser" and "estar" in Spanish.

I'm also curious about other spoken languages that do this rhetorical-question thing -- if there are others and how they implement it. There must be.

I really need to order that book. I know that it said, "ASL uses rhetoricals a lot," but what I thought it meant was, "ASL uses rhetoricals a lot." What it really meant was, "ZOMG YOU CANNOT TALK FOR MORE THAN FIVE SECONDS IN ASL WITHOUT A RHETORICAL YOU MUST LEARN THEM OR DIE!"

So, like I said ... bit of a mental shift, there. Far from the mild "ASL uses rhetoricals," it's more like, "You will be up to your nose hairs in rhetoricals if you learn ASL. Rhetoricals! Scads of them, as far as the eye can see! They go for miles!"