Abstract
We examine the conceptualization of space in signed language discourse within the theory of cognitive grammar. Adopting a Places view, we define Place as a symbolic structure that associates a schematic semantic pole and a schematic phonological pole. Places acquire full contextual meaning and a specific spatial location in the context of a usage event. In the present article, we analyze the referential function of Places in different grammatical constructions throughout a selection of videos produced by deaf Argentine Sign Language signers. Our analysis examines Places, which are associated with entities in the surrounding spatial environment as well as Places that are created or recruited in discourse without reference to surrounding physical entities. We observe that Places are used in pointing, placing, and other grammatical constructions in order to introduce and track referents in ongoing discourse. We also examine the use of conceptual reference points, by which Places afford mental access to new related concepts that are the intended focus of attention. These results allow us to discuss three related issues. First, for signed language discourse, space is both semantically and phonologically loaded. Signers’ semantic and phonological choices for Place symbolic structures are motivated by embodied experience and the abstraction of usage events. Second, Places occur along a continuum from deixis to anaphor, united by the same conceptual system and differing in extent of phonological subjectification. Third, we suggest developmental implications of our Place analysis.
Highlights
Signed languages are uniquely suited for studying the conceptualization of space
We have examined the conceptualization of space in signed language discourse within the theory of cognitive grammar (CG)
Symbolic structures are basic explanatory concepts in CG; lexicon and grammar form a gradation consisting solely in assemblies of symbolic structures varying in degree of complexity and schematicity
Summary
Signed languages are uniquely suited for studying the conceptualization of space. Signs are produced by moving hands in three-dimensional space. As a signer perceives and produces more of these usage events, she abstracts away from the specifics of any particular entity and its location, developing an ever-more schematic concept of directing attention to an entity in a location This is the Place symbolic structure, in which the “entity referred to” is the schematic semantic pole and “some spatial location” is the schematic phonological pole. Entities and the Places associated with them may be real but imagined, as in the teacher example, or they may be abstract, such as two theories located in signing space for purposes of comparison All of these elaborations beyond the baseline of a real, physically present object require additional conceptual resources. Places associated with physical entities in the ground (Pablo as signer, Alejandro as one of the interlocutors) play essential roles in the component structures that go into forming this complex construction. As we saw in the Order of the Screw example, the effect is a zoom-in strategy by metonymic association: Argentina > two battling sides in Argentina (revolutionaries vs. monarchists) > the revolutionaries > Belgrano
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