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Does Space Structure Spatial Language? A Comparison of Spatial Expression Across Sign Languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Inge Zwitserlood ,
Pamela Perniss  and
Asli Özyürek
Inge Zwitserlood*
Affiliation:
University of Brighton
Pamela Perniss*
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen
Asli Özyürek*
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
*
[i.zwitserlood@let.ru.nl] (Zwitserlood)
Perniss, School of Humanities, Checkland Building D331, University of Brighton, Brighton, BN1 9PH, United Kingdom, [p.perniss@brighton.ac.uk]
[asli.ozyurek@mpi.nl] (Özyürek)
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Abstract

The spatial affordances of the visual modality give rise to a high degree of similarity between sign languages in the spatial domain. This stands in contrast to the vast structural and semantic diversity in linguistic encoding of space found in spoken languages. However, the possibility and nature of linguistic diversity in spatial encoding in sign languages has not been rigorously investigated by systematic crosslinguistic comparison. Here, we compare locative expression in two unrelated sign languages, Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili, TİD) and German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS), focusing on the expression of FIGURE-GROUND (e.g. cup on table) and FIGURE-FIGURE (e.g. cup next to cup) relationships in a discourse context. In addition to similarities, we report qualitative and quantitative differences between the sign languages in the formal devices used (i.e. unimanual vs. bimanual; simultaneous vs. sequential) and in the degree of iconicity of the spatial devices. Our results suggest that sign languages may display more diversity in the spatial domain than has been previously assumed, and in a way more comparable with the diversity found in spoken languages. The study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how space gets encoded in language.

Keywords

spatial languagelinguistic diversitysign languageGerman Sign Language (DGS)Turkish Sign Language (TİD)semantic specificitycross-modal diversity

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 91 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 611 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Linguistic Society of America

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