This paper examines the object fronting construction of American Sign Language (Liddell, 1980; Matsuoka 1997), and its relation to verb raising and aspectual inflection. In this construction, word order, canonically S-V-O, is modified to O-S-V. Matsuoka (1997) argues persuasively for a relationship between object fronting and overt verb raising, driven by the presence of an affixal verbal inflection (per Lasnik, 1995b). Thus, her analysis reduces ASL object fronting to an instance of 'object shift' as occurs in the Scandinavian language family (Bobaljik & Jonas 1996). However, evidence is provided here, from the distributions of adverbs and modals, and from the interaction of object fronting with question formation and raising contexts, which indicates that ASL object fronting targets a position high in the clause.A new model of ASL object fronting is developed against the backdrop of Matsuoka (1997) and the Lasnik (1995b) theory of verbal morphology. This new framework has much in common with Matsuoka's account, while attaining greater empirical coverage. In this framework, as in Matsuoka, overt verb raising is triggered by the presence of an aspectual head (Asp). However, I argue that AspP is part of an articulated COMP layer (Rizzi, 1997). Object fronting targets spec-AspP, an A'-position. This model is shown to provide a better account of the distribution of adverbs and modals in object-fronted clauses, as well as explanations of the behavior of object fronted clauses in questions and in embedded contexts.Lasnik's (1995b) model of verbal morphology is extended such that verbs in (some varieties of) ASL allow both derivational and lexical options for aspectual inflection. This mechanism provides for an explanation of the infelicity of object fronted clauses in embedded contexts. The analysis crucially relies on the categorial status of object-fronted clauses and the mechanism of c-selection.