Naslov
Is spatial language of sign language the same?: A crosslinguistic study of space in Croatian, American, and Turkish sign languages

Autori
Arik, Engen ; Milković, Marina

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
Central European Cognitive Linguistics Conference: Cognitive Linguistics between Universality and Variation

Mjesto i datum
Dubrovnik, Hrvatska, 30.09.2008. - 01.10.2008

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Poster

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
spatial relations; Croatian (HZJ); American (ASL); and Turkish (TID) Sign Language

Sažetak
All languages encode spatial relations through lexicalization / grammaticalization patterns. However they differ from each other in semantics of conveying static relations (Pederson et al, 1998) and motion events (Bohnemeyer et al, 2007). All sign languages (SLs) have complex constructions for spatial relations (Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006) that (1) have a limited inventory motivated by iconicity (Supalla, 1986) and (2) grammatically encode as many as thirty properties of a spatial relation as opposed to spoken languages (Talmy, 2003). Yet it is unknown to what extent “ iconic inventory” plays a role across sign languages, which aspects of a basic spatial state are encoded in a SL, and how SLs differ from each in their encodings. In this paper we targeted this question by investigating the way signers talk about locative relations in Croatian, American, and Turkish SLs (HZJ, ASL, and TID, respectively). Taking form-function-meaning relationship into account, we showed that HZJ, ASL, and TID differed from each other in their spatial domain. A total of thirty signers (ten signers of each language) participated in this study. Using the same experimental materials we elicited descriptions of object relations on a table-top space with no motion (left vs. right, front vs. back). The signers described several spatial configurations of objects during face-to-face interaction. We found that (1) as expected the HZJ, ASL, and TID signers talk about space by using signing space ; yet they marked only locations and orientations of entities linguistically in the signing space and the linguistic forms varied as in spoken languages. (2) there were differences between the actual layout and the linguistic descriptions provided by the signers within and across the SLs, (3) although each language had a limited set of complex constructions, the sets varied across the SLs, and (4) the descriptions varied across participants within a language. Non-universality of the inventory and individual differences suggested that signs were not just iconic in representing spatial relations.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Pedagogija

POVEZANOST RADA