A Comparison of Spatial Language in English & American Sign Language

Abstract

Spatial language (how one talks about space) in English and American Sign Language (ASL) was compared by asking 10 native signers and 10 English speakers to solve a set of spatial puzzles. Subjects had to describe where to place a group of blocks so that the blocks completely filled a puzzle grid. There were no group differences between how signers and speakers solved the puzzles. However, language affected the types of spatial commands that were used to solve them. English speakers relied heavily on the grid co-ordinate labels marked on the puzzle, but ASL signers were able to use signing space to refer to puzzle positions. ASL signers also made significantly more overt references to orientation due to the ability to represent orientation directly with hand position or tracing. The semantics of English in and on was found to be different from that of ASL IN and ON. Finally, analysis of modality-specific aspects of ASL spatial language revealed phonological and morphological constraints on the use of the nondominant hand, constraints on how signing space is mapped to physical space, and a bias toward choice of ground object deriving from phonological dominance and discourse constraints. The study highlights the ramifications of a linguistic system in which space itself is used to convey spatial information compared to a linguistic system that conveys this same information via an auditory signal.