engleski

Describing space in three sign languages: Not as iconic as you think

Languages differ in their lexicalization / grammaticalization patterns and preferences for perspective taking strategies describing spatial relations. Sign languages (SLs) provide interesting cases since signers represent space by using space. To date it has not been shown how to compare SLs when talking about space. We report use of space and perspective in 3 SLs: Turkish (TID), Croatian (HZJ), and Austrian (OGS) Sign Languages. Deaf signers performed two tasks with two conditions: static and motion events. In the first task, signers describe spatial configurations of objects during face-to-face interaction. In the second task, the addressees retold the narrator’ s spatial descriptions in 3 situations: signers seated face-to-face, side-by-side, and at 90 . The 3 SLs mark locations and orientations of entities linguistically in the signing space. As in spoken languages, functions of these markings are the same and forms vary across the languages. TID and OGS signers took narrator and neutral perspectives whereas HZJ signers took narrator perspective only. None took addressee perspective. Use of signing space didn’ t vary with addressee’ s location in contrast use of gestures in spoken languages. These findings indicate that these SL are not identical even in the lexical and grammatical domain of spatial language. The results argue that signs are not just iconic in representing spatial relations. Overall, we argue that language of space is systematically distinct from perception.

Turkish (TID); Croatian (HZJ); Austrian (OGS) Sign Languages; spatial relations

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