Abstract
Abstract Previous studies on perspective in spatial signed language descriptions suggest a basic dichotomy between either a route or a survey perspective, which entails either the signer being conceptualized as a mobile agent within a life-sized scene or the signer in a fixed position as an external observer of a scaled-down scene. We challenge this dichotomy by investigating the particular couplings of vantage point position and mobility engaged during various types of spatial language produced across eight naturalistic conversations in Norwegian Sign Language. Spatial language was annotated for the purpose of the segment, the size of the environment described, the signs produced, and the location and mobility of vantage points. Analysis revealed that survey and route perspectives, as characterized in the literature, do not adequately account for the range of vantage point combinations observed in conversations (e.g., external, but mobile, vantage points). There is also some preliminary evidence that the purpose of the spatial language and the size of the environments described may also play a role in how signers engage vantage points. Finally, the study underscores the importance of investigating spatial language within naturalistic conversational contexts.
Highlights
Across the world’s signed languages, signers produce manual and non-manual bodily actions in the space in front of and around them to prompt conceptualizations of various types of scenes
Analysis revealed that survey and route perspectives, as characterized in the literature, do not adequately account for the range of vantage point combinations observed in conversations
The study presented above investigated the vantage points adopted by a number of Norwegian Sign Language signers during periods of spatial language
Summary
Across the world’s signed languages, signers produce manual and non-manual bodily actions in the space in front of and around them to prompt conceptualizations of various types of scenes. These scenes can involve spatial relationships that are conceived and presented from particular vantage points. A signer can present a scene from ‘within,’ which may allow them to interact with spaces and referents They can ‘look around’ the scene as if they were there themselves. The vantage point of such instances is characterized as external to the scene These two possible vantage point positions will be considered in this study, as well as whether the vantage point is mobile or static. Whereas studies of spoken languages often focus on how spatial concepts and relations are mapped onto the lexicon and grammar (e.g., Bowerman, 1996; Forker, 2012), or what types of perspective are indicated with various types of linguistic constructions (e.g., Levinson, 1996), here the focus is on how signers map spatial meanings onto the three-dimensional signing space and how vantage points structure the conceptualized scenes
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