16.1 Signed Languages
The history of deaf people and their signed languages is mired in false assumptions and misunderstandings. Signing was seen to be only imagistic gestures, certainly not a language. Deaf people were long considered uneducable. The first schools for deaf children were only established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The most famous of these was in Paris. The story goes that Charles-Michel de l’Épée, a Catholic priest, saw young deaf sisters signing, and he had an idea. He believed that this signing could be used to teach deaf children. What he did not realize was their signing was a fully developed language that met the needs of the French deaf community. We know this from Pierre Desloges (1779, as reported in Lane & Grosjean Reference Lane and Grosjean1980: 123–124), a deaf Parisian who wrote:
There is no event in Paris, in France, and in the four corners of the world that is not a topic of our conversations. We express ourselves on all topics with as much orderliness, precision, and speed as if we enjoyed the faculties of speech and hearing.
In order to teach deaf children in his Paris Institute, l’Épée took the lexical stock of this language and modified it in various ways to represent French; he called this ‘methodical signs’. Because the Paris Institute was one of the only schools to use signed language, educators from other countries came to adopt l’Épée’s approach, and his method spread throughout France and Europe into the nineteenth century. In the early 1800s an educator from the United States, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, visited the Paris Institute. Gallaudet returned with one of the school’s deaf instructors, Laurent Clerc. Together, they established a school for the deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. As a result, instruction by sign spread throughout the United States.
Not everyone believed signing was the proper way to teach deaf children. A growing group favored the Oral Method, by which students were supposed to learn to speak. The opposing views turned into a battle, and the site was Milan, Italy, in 1880. A group led by Gallaudet advocated for signing instruction. The oralist camp believed signing would corrupt the minds of deaf children. One prominent oralist, Giulio Tarra, drew the argument into sharp relief, equating language with speech and sign with gesture (Lane Reference Lane1984: 393–394):
Gesture [i.e., sign] is not the true language of man which suits the dignity of his nature. Gesture, instead of addressing the mind, addresses the imagination and the senses. … Thus, for us it is an absolute necessity to prohibit that language and to replace it with living speech, the only instrument of human thought … Oral speech is the sole power that can rekindle the light God breathed into man when, giving him a soul in a corporeal body, he gave him also a means of understanding, of conceiving, and of expressing himself. … While, on the one hand, mimic signs are not sufficient to express the fullness of thought, on the other they enhance and glorify fantasy and all the faculties of the sense of imagination … The fantastic language of signs exalts the senses and foments the passions, whereas speech elevates the mind much more naturally, with calm and truth and avoids the danger of exaggerating the sentiment expressed and provoking harmful mental impressions.
The oralists won the debate and the Oral Method became the dominant form of deaf education. By the turn of the twentieth century, there were no schools in France or the United States that used signing. Deaf instructors were fired from their positions. Signed languages did not disappear, of course. But our understanding of them entered a dark period.
16.2 Linguistic Analysis of Signed Languages
In 1960 William C. Stokoe was a professor of English at Gallaudet College in Washington, DC, the world’s only institute of higher education dedicated to serving deaf students. In a scene reminiscent of l’Épée, Stokoe had been observing his students signing and began to believe it was a unique visual language. He discussed this with his faculty colleagues, who told him this was nonsense, that signing was simply a bad representation of English and lacked any structure of its own.
The view that signed languages lack linguistic structure is expressed linguistically in the claim that they lack duality of patterning – that is, that they do not have a finite inventory of meaningless elements that combine to form meaningful elements (Pulleyblank Reference Pulleyblank1987). Whenever linguists were asked to consider signed languages, the response was that signed languages are not vocally produced and thus do not consist of sounds. Signed languages have no phonology – the very name, after all, refers to ‘sound’.
Stokoe was not a trained linguist; his PhD had been in medieval literature, and he realized he needed a background in linguistics in order to show that signed languages do have a phonology. So in the summer of 1957 he studied with linguists George Trager and Henry Lee Smith at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Buffalo, New York. From them he learned structuralist linguistics and phonology. The outcome was a pioneering book, Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf (Stokoe Reference Stokoe2005).Footnote 1 Stokoe demonstrated that signs do have a level of structure equivalent to the phonemes of spoken words. He called these minimal elements cheremes, the root word cher- from Homeric Greek meaning ‘hand’. He defined cheremes as “that set of positions, configurations, or motions which function identically [to phonemes] in the language; the structure point of sign language (analogous to ‘phoneme’)” (Stokoe Reference Stokoe2005: 33). Relying on the structuralist approach, he observed that “Like consonant and vowel,” the cheremes of position, configuration, and motion “may only be described in terms of contrast with each other” (Stokoe Reference Stokoe2005: 20). These three structural elements became known as location, handshape, and movement.
Stokoe moved beyond this structural view in his later writing. Structuralist assumptions, however, remained embedded within sign linguistics with significant implications for what is considered to constitute phonology, the lexicon, grammar, and constructions in a signed language. One significant impact of the structuralist heritage is the notion that the phonology of signed languages constitutes a finite set of elements, a listable inventory of meaningless building blocks for signs. As we will see, the linguistic status of location as one of those phonological elements emerges as a problem in the analyses of grammatical constructions.
16.3 Constructional Approaches
In this section we review approaches to the analysis of grammatical phenomena in signed languages that take a constructional approach. We start with a proposal for constructional morphology (Section 16.3.1) and then move to grammatical constructions (Section 16.3.2). One important issue that arises in research on grammatical constructions in signed languages pertains to the relation between language and gesture as components in grammatical constructions (Section 16.3.3).
16.3.1 Construction Morphology
One of the assumptions sign linguistics has inherited from the structuralist tradition is that linguistic knowledge is divided into two distinct categories, the lexicon and the grammar, each constituting separate ‘modules’ requiring a special set of primitives. Lepic and Occhino (Reference Lepic, Occhino and Booij2018) offer a Construction Morphology approach to the analysis of signed language structure as an alternative to structuralist sign morphology.
Sign language linguists traditionally distinguish a set of non-compositional, core lexical signs from multimorphemic classifier construction signs.Footnote 2 Core lexical signs have standard citation forms and meanings that are considered to be unpredictable from their sub-lexical structure and are assumed to reside in the lexicon. Classifier constructions exhibit more variability and transparency. Classifier signs are assumed to be productively derived in the grammar.
However, upon closer examination there is a gradient between core lexical and classifier signs. Signs like MEET in ASL are categorized in the core lexicon, with unpredictable forms and meanings (Brentari & Padden Reference Brentari, Padden and Brentari2001). The sign MEET can, however, be modified to create a morphologically related sign such as MISS-EACH-OTHER, which is categorized as a classifier construction. This raises the question of the relation between core lexicon and classifier constructions. One answer has been to claim that with repeated use, classifier constructions lexicalize. Viewed from the opposite direction, core lexical signs may be used in ways that reveal the compositional, transparent morphological structure characteristic of classifier constructions, or delexicalize.
In the Construction Morphology approach (see also Chapter 4), signs are morphological schemas containing both specific and schematic aspects of form and meaning. Certain sign constructions are highly specified morphological schemas with fixed pairings of form and meaning. MEET consists of a specific handshape (index finger) on both hands and a specific movement (hands approach and contact in front of signer). Others exhibit partially fixed or schematic structure. In MISS-EACH-OTHER the handshape is specified as for MEET; the movement, however, is schematic and contextually determined in use. Analyzability is thus a matter of the degree of entrenchment and conventionality of each component element as well as of the composite construction.
An example of the Construction Morphology approach is the ‘movable object’ construction, a family of signs in which two ‘A’ hands (a closed fist with the thumb extended) move in various ways relative to one another. The ASL signs FAR, CHASE, and FOLLOW are members of this family, along with several others (Frishberg & Gough Reference Frishberg and Gough2000). Associations of form and meaning across these three signs are extracted to create a morphological schema. The A-handshape remains as a constant, specific aspect of the form; movement and configuration of the hands are schematic components. The morphological schema analysis makes two predictions: “First, conventional (lexical) sign constructions that instantiate a morphological schema are expected to retain analyzable internal structure, even as they begin to gradually take on more idiomatic meanings,” and “Second, signers are expected to productively modulate their articulation of a schematic sign construction” (Lepic & Occhino Reference Lepic, Occhino and Booij2018: 160). This productive modulation produces a classifier construction. As an example, Lepic and Occhino offer an excerpt from an ASL news story discussing the 2015 United States Democratic party primary polling. At one point, Bernie Sanders was trailing Hillary Clinton by twenty-one points, but then he started catching up and at the time of the report was leading. In the description, the two fixed A-handshapes of the movable object construction represent the polling ranking of Sanders and Clinton; changing the relation between the hands instantiates the schematic relation between two entities in the construction – in this context, Sanders’ falling back or catching up. Lepic and Occhino conclude that requiring the signs FALL-BACK and CATCH-UP to be categorized as either core lexical signs or classifier constructions is a vestige of the structuralist tradition.
Lepic and Occhino also explore what they call the language vs. gesture problem: the assumption of a categorical division between language and gesture. They note that previous analyses have tried to distinguish the two in terms of a categorical distinction between elements that are listable, analyzable, and conventional (language) and elements that are holistic, context-dependent, and defy rule-based generalizations (gesture). The result of this view, they say, is that any gradient aspect of signing must be considered gestural and non-linguistic by definition.
Under a Construction Morphology approach, however, gradience and schematicity is an aspect of all constructions. This complements what is known from usage-based approaches, such as Bybee (Reference Bybee2010), who observes that all types of units proposed by linguists show gradience, in the sense that they exhibit variation within the domain of the unit (different types of words, morphemes, syllables) and difficulty in setting the boundaries of the unit.
16.3.2 Grammatical Constructions
Research applying construction grammar approaches to signed languages is still relatively rare. In the present section, research on the discourse functions of constructions with certain ASL verbs is presented. Hou (Reference Hou2022a) investigates recurring constructions that involve a high-frequency sign of visual perception glossed as LOOK and a family of ‘look’ signs. The LOOK sign exhibits two broad functions: LOOK/‘vision’ references literal or metaphorical vision, and LOOK/‘reaction’ signals a person’s reaction to a visual stimulus. These two major constructions were identified based on a corpus of 706 tokens and 36 types from the family of look signs. LOOK/‘vision’ was found to occur in more diverse syntactic environments, including:
(a) presence of an explicit object in a post-verbal position;
(c) co-occurrence with negators in pre-verbal position;
(d) formation of a complex predicate by co-occurrence of LOOK with another verb; and
(e) nominalization of LOOK (e.g., ‘reminiscence’).
LOOK/‘reaction’, on the other hand, tended to occur in expressions with first-person representing the signer’s attitudinal stance. This first-person LOOK/‘reaction’ construction appears to be grammaticizing as a highly conventionalized unit. Hou proposes three constructional schemas. Constructional schemas (1) and (3) correspond to LOOK/‘vision’ and LOOK/‘reaction’, respectively; constructional schema (2) was ambiguous between the two.
(1) (subject: agent) – LOOK/‘vision’ – (object)
‘Hey, look at me, could you please look me in the eye?’
(2) (subject: agent) – LOOK/‘vision’ – reaction
‘I was assigned to read Edgar Allan Poe, I read it, it went over my head.’
In this example, read is expressed by the sign LOOK. The first interpretation expresses vision with a book as the object; the second is ambiguous because the subsequent single sign over my head expresses the signer’s reaction that Poe was too difficult to understand.
(3) (subject: experiencer) – LOOK/‘reaction’ – reaction
‘He was like oh I see, you’re deaf, got it.’
Hou (Reference Hou2022b) adopts a usage-based approach to describe the argument structure of directional verbs in ASL.Footnote 3 Canonically, directional verbs consist of a path movement between locations determined by the arguments. For example, GIVE in a transfer construction might move between two locations, the first corresponding to the agent and the second to the recipient of the giving act.Footnote 4
Hou examined two datasets totalling 494 tokens of seven highly frequent ASL directional verbs: ASK, TELL, REMIND, AWARD, GIVE, CONVINCE, LOOK-AT. The verbs were grouped into those that can be used in reported speech constructions (ASK, TELL, REMIND), passive constructions (AWARD, GIVE, CONVINCE), and stance verb constructions (LOOK-AT). The analysis revealed two types of reported speech construction (RSC) schemas:
RSC Type 1 schema: [(subject) {ASK, REMIND, TELL …} (object) [CA: …]]Footnote 5
RSC Type 2 schema: [(subject) {ASK, REMIND, TELL …} (object) …]
Four types of passive (and reflexive) constructions were identified:
Passive construction Type 2: [… GIVE.3 object1 TO object2 …]
Passive construction Type 3: [… (subject) AWARD.3 …]
Passive/reflexive construction Type 4: [… PRO.1 CONVINCE.1 …]
Finally, LOOK-AT appeared in two constructions, as already described above (Hou Reference Hou2022b):
LOOK/‘vision’ construction: [(subject) (modal) (negator) LOOK/‘vision’ (object)]
LOOK/‘reaction’ construction: [(subject) LOOK-AT/‘reaction’ X-reaction]
Hou suggests that focusing on the discourse function of the verb can help resolve theoretical questions concerning the status of these constructions, specifically whether argument locations are language or gesture.
16.3.3 Constructions and Gesture
Unburdened of the need to defend the status of signed languages as nothing more than gesture, sign linguists have begun to explore the relationship between the two systems. Diachronic research suggests that gestures become incorporated over time into the linguistic systems of signed languages through lexicalization and grammaticalization (Wilcox Reference Wilcox2004, Reference Wilcox2005; Pfau & Steinbach Reference Pfau, Steinbach, Heine and Narrog2011; Janzen Reference Janzen, Steinbach, Pfau and Woll2012). In general, the process starts with a manually produced gesture which enters a signed language as a lexical morpheme; that lexical sign then acquires grammatical meaning. For example, it has been proposed that a departure gesture used in the Mediterranean region entered French Sign Language (LSF) as the lexical sign PARTIR ‘leave’ (Janzen & Shaffer Reference Janzen, Shaffer, Meier, Quinto and Cormier2002). Because ASL is historically related to LSF, the sign also appeared in ASL at the turn of the twentieth century with the lexical meaning ‘to depart’. It also occurs in ASL with a more grammatical function marking ‘future’.
The second way gesture and sign may interact is by co-occurring in utterances. This synchronic relationship has direct relevance to the nature of constructions, since it suggests that grammatical constructions may consist of both linguistic and gestural components (see also Chapter 15). One candidate for classification as a gestural component is the location at which signs are directed, for example in pointing and in verbs that mark arguments by spatial location. Liddell (Reference Liddell2003) points out the difficulties with specifying locations in pointing constructions (which Liddell calls pointing gestures), in indicating verbs,Footnote 6 in which arguments are marked by location, and in other constructions. The problem arises because these expressions can use innumerable locations to identify arguments. For example, consider the ASL verb ASK-QUESTION used in questioning constructions. When a signer asks an addressee a question, ASK-QUESTION is directed at the addressee’s chin. The specific location changes depending on the spatial location and relative heights of the addressee and the signer. As Liddell (Reference Liddell and Lucas1990) observes, if the signer were facing an exceptionally tall man, ASK-QUESTION would be directed to a location considerably higher than the signer. Other signs must be directed at specific parts of the body. GIVE is directed at the addressee’s chest and COMMUNICATE-TELEPATHICALLY is directed at the addressee’s forehead (Liddell Reference Liddell2003). Of course, many other factors can determine the spatial location of the addressee. In all of these cases, where the addressee or some conceptualized addressee is located will determine the location at which these signs are directed. Liddell attributes these properties of location to gradience and concludes that these facts about location “are inconsistent with the claim that there is a locus associated with the addressee toward which signs are directed. If there were such a locus, all directional signs referring to the same entity (e.g., the addressee) would be directed toward that single locus” (Reference Liddell2003: 76).
The spatial locations used to specify arguments are claimed to be an open set of unlistable locations. Since location is a phonological element, the claim implies that locations do not have linguistic status and instead are categorized as gesture. In a GIVE construction, for example, the handshape and certain other properties of the sign are regarded as linguistic, while the location at which the sign is directed is classified as gesture. Pointing, agreement, and many other grammatical constructions in signed languages are thus seen as combinations of linguistic and gestural elements. Liddell recognizes the need to specify phonological locations, but since these specifications are seen as gesture, he concludes that “Each individual verb has specific gestural characteristics associated with it” (Reference Liddell2003: 139).
Although Wilbur (Reference Wilbur2013: 222–223) does not accept Liddell’s argument, she summarizes it succinctly:
Liddell (Reference Liddell2003, Reference Liddell2011) has argued that since directional verbs move between spatial locations associated with referents, and since there are an infinite number of possible points, the forms of these verbs are unlistable, and are therefore just gestural indications of the referent … Thus, the argument goes, if the locations in space that are used for indexic and referential pointing are not listable, they cannot be part of the grammar, and therefore must be external to it, that is, part of ‘gesture’.
Schembri and colleagues (Schembri et al. Reference Schembri, Cormier and Fenlon2018) apply Liddell’s analysis, examining indicating verb constructions in detail in order to determine if they are compatible with an analysis in which agreement is a morphosyntactic mechanism of copying features from one verbal unit (controller) to another one (target). Accepting Liddell’s claim that in such constructions any movement of the signing hand towards a location signals an association with a referent (in the same way as a pointing gesture would by a non-signer), they extend his analysis by proposing that indicating verbs are typologically unique unimodal constructions (comparable to multimodal constructions in spoken languages) (Schembri et al. Reference Schembri, Cormier and Fenlon2018). They propose that indicating verbs are conventionalized pairings of form and meaning that consist partly of a monomorphemic sign specified phonologically for handshape, orientation, and movement, and “partly of a deictic gesture which has its own pragmatic properties” (Schembri et al. Reference Schembri, Cormier and Fenlon2018: 12). They note that if directionality in indicating verbs is a type of gesture rather than person agreement markers, this would predict that directionality of signs will have more in common with directionality in co-speech gestures than with agreement marking. They go on to show, as per Liddell’s (Reference Liddell, Emmorey and Lane2000, Reference Liddell2003) argument, that directionality of indicating verbs is not controlled by a formal or semantic property of the controller noun phrase, but by the real or imagined location of the referent. They note that an agreement analysis fails because the location of a referent is not reflected in any grammatical feature of the controller in signed languages; that is, they say, there is no evidence that all nouns of a particular signed language “have an inherent grammatical feature of location, with a fixed set of values” (Schembri et al. Reference Schembri, Cormier and Fenlon2018: 17) as would be required for a feature-copying agreement system.
They offer supporting evidence for their analysis of indicating verbs as fusions of signs and pointing gestures from a corpus-based study of indicating verbs in British Sign Language. Following Liddell’s claim that signers direct indicating verbs towards real or imagined referents, they predict that indicating verbs should co-occur with constructed action, in which the signer’s face and body represent an imagined referent’s actions, utterances, or feelings. Fenlon et al. (Reference Fenlon, Schembri and Cormier2018) showed that the presence of constructed action significantly favored modification of indicating verbs to mark subject and object arguments. Schembri et al. conclude that the indicating verb system of signed languages is not an agreement system, because the way in which these constructions exploit space for deictic reference “does not always result in the systematic covariance normally associated with agreement systems” (Reference Schembri, Cormier and Fenlon2018: 29). Rather, they conclude that the similarities to gesture argue for an analysis of indicating verbs as typologically unique, unimodal fusions of morphemes and pointing gestures functioning as a construction for the purpose of reference tracking.
Janzen (Reference Janzen2017) approaches the question of whether signed language constructions contain gestural elements from the perspective of Enfield’s (Reference Enfield2009, Reference Enfield, Müller, Cienki, Fricke, Ladewig, McNeill and Tessendorf2013) proposal of expressions as composite utterances. According to this view, utterances are complete units of social action with multiple components embedded in a sequential context, with meaning drawing on “both conventional and non-conventional signs, joined indexically as wholes” (Enfield Reference Enfield2009: 223).
Janzen examines topic-comment constructions and perspective-taking constructions in ASL to identify their linguistic and gestural elements. In ASL topic-comment constructions such as (4), the topic phrase is indicated by raised eyebrows and potentially a backward head tilt; at the beginning of the comment phrase the eyebrow and head return to a neutral position. This non-manual grammatical topic marking has been shown to be grammaticalized from a generalized questioning gesture (Janzen Reference Janzen1999).
(4) [TOMORROW NIGHT]-top WORK
‘Tomorrow evening I am working.’
Janzen suggests that in this construction, the signs TOMORROW, NIGHT, and WORK are conventional elements that are lexical, listable, and have a standard form across ASL communities. The status of the facial and head gestures, he contends, is less clear. While these non-manual topic marking elements are conventional in that they are “interpreted as signaling a topic phrase,” Janzen (Reference Janzen2017: 522–523) suggests that their “status as grammaticalized from a gestural body action does not preclude that the action is still gestural” and thus that the utterance is a hybrid composed of linguistic and gestural elements.
In a more complex example, a signer tells that while driving on the highway she sees an oncoming police car and pulls her car off onto the side of the road. The signer produces the utterance KNOW R-O-A-D HIGHWAY.Footnote 7 Janzen offers two observations about this utterance. First, the topic “road highway” introduced by KNOW is used to invoke a schema for highways as a reference point for the shoulder area. Second, in this utterance KNOW is articulated on the signer’s cheek rather than the canonical forehead location that would indicate a fully lexical word. Janzen notes that “there is a tendency for such alternate, non-canonical locations to be somewhat more likely when the sign has a grammaticalized function, and thus has lost its yes/no question interactional function” (Janzen Reference Janzen2017: 525), and argues that this non-canonical articulation suggests that “KNOW in this utterance is a hybrid signifier and not a purely conventional one” (Janzen Reference Janzen2017: 524).
In the same story, the signer produces the utterance in (5):
(5) WINDOW, depic:lean-on
‘She was leaning on the car door.’
Janzen analyzes WINDOW as a reference point topic, with a comment “consisting of an entirely gestural depiction of someone inside the car leaning on the car door (with the window completely rolled down)” (Janzen Reference Janzen1999: 527). Thus, this utterance is analyzed as a complete, meaningful utterance consisting of one conventional lexical sign and one gestural element.
A third example of a composite utterance occurs in a comparative construction. In comparative constructions, the entities to be compared are positioned in contralateral and ipsilateral locations in front of the signer (Winston Reference Winston, Emmorey and Reilly1995). The signer describes the changing size of wolf populations based on the changing size of their food source, using the contralateral and ipsilateral positions to indicate the two wolf populations, their comparative sizes, and the relative sizes of the food sources. Janzen observes that
The spatial positioning of each is considered here to be gestural. There is nothing linguistic that would necessitate the use of these spaces, although their conventionalization would indicate that their use has regularized as grammar, so that here we would propose that this construction represents an instance where something has entered the domain of grammar and yet has retained gestural components.
A final example of a composite perspective-taking utterance comes from the previous story about the driver pulling off to the side of the road. In this utterance, the signer depicts the driver sitting with her hands still grasping the steering wheel; her body and face indicate that she is looking down the road at the police car. Janzen notes that viewpointed gestural stances in depicted narrative events occur frequently in ASL utterances, and suggests that in this case the signer’s body and face are non-conventional gestures because “they portray the signer’s subjective take on a particular character’s interaction in a single event” (Janzen Reference Janzen2017: 532). As compared to the utterance in which the signer depicted a leaning gesture on the car, which Janzen categorizes as wholly non-conventional, this utterance is classified as partly conventional because the signer simultaneously uses “a conventionalized (depicting) verb for driving in ASL” (Janzen Reference Janzen2017: 532). Thus, this construction is classified as having conventionalized linguistic components (the sign for driving) and gestural components (the signer’s body and face).
The distinction between conventional and non-conventional, which is often equated with lexical versus gestural, is critical to the argument for sign–gesture composites and for what constitutes a grammatical construction. Janzen warns against making a binary distinction between conventional and non-conventional elements of signed language utterances, suggesting that conventionality should be seen as a continuum. He concludes that the role played by gesture in signed languages has never been clear, and there is still much to learn about the extent to which signed language utterances may be infused with gestural elements.
16.4 Cognitive Grammar and Sign Constructions
The focus in this section will be an approach to signed language constructions based on Cognitive Grammar (Wilcox & Occhino Reference Wilcox and Occhino2016; Martínez & Wilcox Reference Martínez and Wilcox2019; Wilcox & Martínez Reference Wilcox and Martínez2020). Cognitive Grammar is a radically austere construction grammar, claiming that lexicon, morphology, and syntax consist solely of assemblies of symbolic structures, the pairing of a semantic structure and a phonological structure, such that one is able to evoke the other (Langacker Reference Langacker1987, Reference Langacker1991, Reference Langacker2008). Semantic structures are conceptualizations that signers and speakers recruit to express meanings. The essential feature of phonological structures is that they are able to be overtly manifest.
Langacker (Reference Langacker, de Mendoza Ibáñez and Cervel2005) compares Cognitive Grammar with other types of construction grammars, such as Goldberg (Reference Goldberg1995) and Croft (Reference Croft2001). All construction grammars assume that constructions subsume lexicon and grammar and consist of form–meaning pairings, but differ in what is meant by form. In Cognitive Grammar, form specifically refers to phonological structure. Cognitive grammar does not include what in other types of construction grammars would be called grammatical form. Goldberg (Reference Goldberg1995) for example describes the pairing between a semantic and a syntactic level of grammatical functions, and Croft (Reference Croft2001: 62) defines a construction as symbolic because it consists of “a pairing of a morphosyntactic structure with a semantic structure.” In the Cognitive Grammar approach, grammatical form “does not symbolize semantic structure, but rather incorporates it, as one of its two poles” (Langacker Reference Langacker, de Mendoza Ibáñez and Cervel2005: 105). The basic claim of Cognitive Grammar is that grammatical notions such as noun, verb, noun phrase, subject, and object “are semantically definable and inherent in symbolic assemblies” (Langacker Reference Langacker, de Mendoza Ibáñez and Cervel2005: 106); linear order is a dimension of the phonological pole rather than an aspect of grammatical form. Whereas other construction grammars assume these irreducible grammatical primitives, Cognitive Grammar claims that only semantic and phonological structures are necessary, instantiating two fundamental domains of human experience: conceptualization (semantic structure) and perceptible forms (auditorily perceptible speech sounds and visually perceptible sign forms).
Constructions in Cognitive Grammar are complex assemblies of symbolic structures. Component symbolic structures are integrated at both the semantic and the phonological poles to form a composite symbolic structure. This integration takes place by correspondences equating schematic elements in one component structure with a more specific element in another component structure; the two structures are “superimposed, their specifications being merged (or unified)” (Langacker Reference Langacker2003: 50).
We find Cognitive Grammar a productive approach for a number of reasons. Apart from the theoretical appeal of reducing an apparently abstract phenomenon such as grammar to the experiential level of human conception and perception, Cognitive Grammar is particularly well suited for analyzing a class of languages in which highly complex, simultaneous forms are the norm. What has previously been described as irreducible signs are revealed in a Cognitive Grammar analysis to be constructions consisting of highly complex assemblies of symbolic structures.
In the following subsections we present research on complex assemblies of symbolic structures that have been carried out within the Cognitive Grammar framework. In Section 16.4.1, we describe nominal grounding as conceptual pointing. Section 16.4.2 presents an analysis of pointing constructions in signed languages. In Section 16.4.3, we describe a construction that allows signed languages to track referents in discourse, the Proxy-Antecedent Construction. In Section 16.4.4, we describe placing constructions in signed languages, which consist of specific, meaningful locations that are created or recruited by the placing of non-body-anchored lexical signs. These meaningful locations are then used in later discourse to track referents. In Section 16.4.5, we present a Cognitive Grammar analysis of signed language agreement verbs. Finally, in Section 16.4.6 we describe the placing-the-signer construction, by which signers indicate changes in character perspective in narratives and reported dialogue.
16.4.1 Nominal Grounding as Conceptual Pointing
Grounding refers to expressions that establish a connection between the ground (the speech or sign event, its participants, and the immediate circumstances including the time and place of speaking or signing) and the content evoked by a nominal or finite clause. Nominal grounding permits the signer or speaker to direct the interlocutor’s attention to the intended discourse referent, and so may be therefore understood as a kind of conceptual pointing. Physical pointing is a type of linguistic symbol, and the act of pointing is a good point of departure for understanding nominal grounding as a kind of mental pointing (Langacker Reference Langacker2016). Figure 16.1 depicts a prototypical act of pointing.
In the diagram, G is the ground in the current speech event. S and H are the speaker/signer and hearer/addressee. The current discourse environment includes the visually accessible immediate physical context. This onstage (OS) region contains a number of entities (the circles) which could be singled out by pointing. The solid arrow represents the pointing finger directed at FOC, the focus of attention. The act of pointing instructs the addressee to follow, both visually and conceptually, its direction. As a result, both interlocutors focus their attention on the same entity, the intended referent.
16.4.2 Pointing Constructions
As we saw in Section 16.3.2, spatial location is used extensively in signed languages, such as in pointing and in marking verb arguments. Yet, spatial location has posed a problem in previous analyses, leading many linguists to exclude these spatial elements of expressions from linguistic status, claiming instead that signed languages are fusions of gesture and language. In this section we show that a Cognitive Grammar symbolic analysis in which spatial location is a schematic phonological component in a variety of sign constructions resolves this problem.
Pointing is a construction consisting of two component symbolic structures – the means of directing attention, called a pointing device, and the focus of attention, a Place,Footnote 8 each consisting of a form and a meaning (Wilcox & Occhino, Reference Wilcox and Occhino2016; Martínez & Wilcox, Reference Martínez and Wilcox2019). Figure 16.2 depicts the two component symbolic structures and the (bolded) composite pointing construction. Ellipses in the phonological pole of the pointing device indicate schematicity, subsuming, for example, index finger, hand, eye gaze, or body orientation. The only phonological specification of the pointing device is that it has to be capable of directing attention. The pointing device instructs the addressee to follow its direction, so that both participants in the communicative event focus their conceptual attention on the same entity, the Place symbolic structure. The only phonological specification of Place is a spatial location (LOC).
Figure 16.2 Pointing construction
The semantic pole of Place is characterized schematically as ‘thing’ – something conceived through grouping and reification as a single entity. Places arise through the process of schematization acting on our perceptual and experiential world of actual usage events. The baseline Place is a perceptible physical object. Through experience with the world, networks of Places are created with varying degrees of semantic and phonological schematicity/specificity.
Conceptually, a pointing construction selects a particular referent from a pool of candidate entities in our mental universe. It does so by mentally pointing to the selected entity (the arrow in Figure 16.3), thereby profiling (bolded) it as the focus of attention. This candidate pool (large circle) and the potential referents (small circles) are elements of the semantic pole of the pointing device. Semantically, the pointing device does not make reference to a specific entity; rather, the selected referent is a schematic dependent structure internal to the pointing device’s semantic pole (cross-hatching in Figure 16.3 indicates schematicity). This schematic structure is elaborated by the semantic pole of a Place, depicted by the right portion of Figure 16.3.
Figure 16.3 Pointing device semantic pole
16.4.3 Anaphora and Proxy-Antecedent Constructions
Pronominal anaphora relies on conceptual reference point relationships (Langacker Reference Langacker1993, Reference Langacker2000; Van Hoek Reference Van Hoek1997). The reference point relationship is shown in Figure 16.4, in which C is the conceptualizer; R is the reference point, a salient entity in the current discourse space; T is the target structure to which R provides access; and D is the dominion, the set of potential targets.
Figure 16.4 Reference point
A spatial example from English illustrates how reference points operate (Wilcox & Occhino Reference Wilcox and Occhino2016). Spatial reference points are commonly used in providing directions. Suppose we learn that a new café, Carol’s Croissant Cottage, has opened, and we ask a friend where it is. Our friend might start by providing a reference point: “Do you know the intersection of Maple Street and Sugar Lane?”Footnote 9 This reference point then provides mental access to the target: “Carol’s Croissant Cottage is on the southeast corner.” Every nominal can serve as a reference point, with potential targets falling within its dominion. The intersection of Maple Street and Sugar Lane could be a reference point for several other businesses, or a recent traffic accident.
The semantic pole of an anaphoric pronoun profiles a schematic thing (indicated in Figure 16.5 by ellipses in the target). It also incorporates the assumption that the speech act participants have mental access to the intended referent, the full nominal antecedent which serves as the pronoun’s reference point. Mental access is provided by the reference point relationship (indicated by the dashed arrow): The pronoun target is in the dominion of the reference point antecedent, which is presumed to be salient and accessible to the interlocutors in the current discourse context. In saying I just bought a new Honda CR-V Hybrid. I really love the gas mileage it gets, the pronoun it is a target in the dominion of the contextually salient reference point Honda CR-V Hybrid.
Figure 16.5 Antecedent-anaphor as reference point
In signed languages, pointing signs function as anaphoric pronouns, demonstratives, body part labels, and more. The reference point analysis of the relationship between anaphoric pronouns and antecedents applies to signed languages as well, with one difference. Rather than consisting of two elements, an antecedent and an anaphor, antecedent-anaphor constructions in a signed language often require three elements: the antecedent, a proxy antecedent, and the anaphoric pronoun.
For example, in the following Argentine Sign Language narrative excerpt the signer uses a pointing construction in a more complex nominal clause, including an embedded relative clause (marked with brackets).
POSS1 NEW TEACHER point(right) < SAME(rel.) PRO1 1TELL2(perf) point (right) TO-RESEMBLE POSS1 MOTHER TO-RESEMBLE point(right) > / YESTERDAY TO-BE-ABSENT(perf).
‘My new teacher, the one I told you resembles my mother, was absent yesterday.’
The signer first signs a noun, TEACHER, which is then followed by a pointing sign directed to a particular spatial location, establishing an association between the referent TEACHER and the location. Later, the signer again points to the location on the right to refer to the teacher. In this construction, the first point creates a Place symbolic structure on the right side of signing space. The semantic pole of the Place symbolic structure profiles a schematic thing, which in this construction is associated with and elaborated by the semantic pole of the antecedent TEACHER. This Place structure then serves as a proxy antecedent for TEACHER. When the signer later wants to invoke the antecedent, she does not point directly to the lexical sign TEACHER (which is located at the head, and thus would require pointing to the signer’s head), but to the phonological spatial location of the proxy antecedent Place. In Figure 16.6, the semantic poles of the antecedent (TEACHER) and the proxy antecedent are connected by dotted correspondence lines indicating that the two conceptually map to the same entity – the antecedent TEACHER instantiates the schematic semantic pole of the proxy antecedent Place. Later in the narrative, the signer again points to this proxy antecedent Place; here the Place functions as a pronominal anaphor. The entity designated by the semantic pole of the anaphoric pointing construction and the entity that instantiated the proxy antecedent, the prior lexical sign TEACHER, are conceptually mapped to the same entity: They are co-referential.
Figure 16.6 Proxy-Antecedent Anaphor construction
Proxy-Antecedent constructions exhibit a feature unique to signed languages: conceptual co-reference is expressed by recruiting the same phonological location for the proxy antecedent and the anaphor. In other words, conceptual overlap is expressed symbolically (and iconically) by phonological overlap.
16.4.4 Placing Constructions
Places are also components in placing constructions in signed languages. The term placing was introduced by Clark (Reference Clark and Kita2003: 185), who identified pointing and placing as two forms of indicating, that is, of creating indices for things. In pointing, speakers direct their addressee’s attention to the object they are indicating. In placing, “speakers try to place the object they are indicating so that it falls within the addressees’ focus of attention” (Clark Reference Clark and Kita2003: 187). Martínez and Wilcox (Reference Martínez and Wilcox2019) extended the concept of placing in the context of signed languages. First, they observed that in signed language constructions, signs are communicative objects that can be placed in spatial locations. Second, they identified two types of placing: create-placing, in which a new Place is created, and recruit-placing, in which the signer recruits an existing Place. Figure 16.7 depicts a generic placing construction. S is the signer, I is the interlocutor, and G is the ground. The bold line with ball end indicates the physical act of placing. The dashed line with a magnet end indicates the subtle distinction between pointing and placing: Rather than directing attention, placing locates an entity so that it falls within the addressee’s focus of attention, and thus attracts the attention of the interlocutor to the Place.
Figure 16.7 Placing
An example of placing in Argentine Sign Language (LSA) is given in Martínez and Wilcox (Reference Martínez and Wilcox2019). The signer introduces the biography of José de San Martín, a hero of the independence of Argentina, Chile, and Perú. At the beginning of the narrative a noun, PERSON, is placed at the right side of the signer, creating a new Place (Figure 16.8). The schematic semantic pole of the Place is elaborated by the semantic pole of PERSON, and the schematic phonological pole of the Place is elaborated by the location on the right of the signer. Constructions specific to a signed language often specify phonological locations for new Places, for example, specifying that new discourse entities are introduced on the signer’s dominant side, or the specific locations of referents in comparative constructions as seen in Section 16.3.3. The placing construction locates PERSON as a newly introduced referent intersubjectively identified and accessible to the interlocutors.
Figure 16.8 Create-Placing and Pointing in Argentine Sign Language
Once the referent Place is created, the signer is able to refer to it in subsequent discourse. For instance, the sign RENOWNED (Figure 16.8) incorporates the nominal referent ‘person’ as a participant of the adjectival relation by directing the sign toward the ‘person’ Place. RENOWNED profiles one focal participant and associates the property of being famous with San Martín. Later in the discourse, the signer refers anaphorically to the same referent with pointing constructions directed to the Place instantiated by San Martín.
A more complex use of pointing comes from a video in LSA of the official account of the Movimiento Argentino de Sordos (MAS) in support of a bill recognizing Argentine Sign Language. In the video, two deaf leaders explain to those gathered that the MAS movement should not attempt to label or classify hearing people as inherently wrong or bad. The signer introduces what will become the discourse topic: Widespread ideology leads hearing people to believe that deaf people are mentally challenged, not equal to hearing people, or are deaf-mute. He does this by first signing IDEOLOGY, a two-handed sign with a location at the head (Figure 16.9). Then, while his non-dominant hand is still in the head location for IDEOLOGY, he begins to point to it with his dominant hand. By the time the signer completes the pointing action his non-dominant hand has moved down to a neutral position (as seen in the second panel of Figure 16.9); the sign IDEOLOGY is no longer present, and so he is pointing to the spatial location formerly occupied by IDEOLOGY. This pointing construction creates an ideology-Place.
Figure 16.9 IDEOLOGY Pointing and Recruit-placing
To express the idea that the goal is to change society’s ideology pertaining to deaf people, the signer places the sign CHANGE in the newly created ideology-Place (Figure 16.9). The schematic location of CHANGE is elaborated by the location of the ideology-Place, which has been previously elaborated by the phonological location of IDEOLOGY. Semantically, CHANGE profiles an action chain which includes an unexpressed agent and a theme, the changed entity. In this construction, the theme is elaborated by the ideology-Place, which in turn conceptually maps to IDEOLOGY.
Figure 16.10 depicts IDEOLOGY (a) and the ideology-Place (b) created by the pointing construction. IDEOLOGY is a lexical noun with full phonological specification (HC is hand configuration, MOV is movement), including the head location. IDEOLOGY is grounded as a full nominal by the proximal (downward directed) pointing device, which also creates an ideology-Place. IDEOLOGY thus corresponds to and elaborates the schematic Place. CHANGE is then placed at the location of the ideology-Place, indicating that ideology is the changed entity. CHANGE is shown as a construction consisting of two symbolic structures: the action chain process ‘change’ (double arrow) and the theme ‘ideology’. CHANGE incorporates a schematic symbolic substructure, indicated by the rectangle enclosing the theme (TH) and the location (LOC). The semantic pole of this symbolic substructure specifies the theme. The schematic phonological pole is elaborated by the placing construction.
Figure 16.10 CHANGE Recruit-placed
16.4.5 Place and Placing in Agreement Constructions
Kibrik (Reference Kibrik2019: 76) categorizes approaches to agreement in spoken languages into two types: a form-to-form and a cognition-to-form mapping approach. The traditional form-to-form approach claims that an agreement feature originates in one linguistic element, the controller, and is copied onto another one, the target. In the cognition-to-form mapping approach, agreement features are associated with referents in the cognitive representation. A similar approach is suggested by Croft, who proposes that agreement affixes express a symbolic relation (rather than a syntactic relation) indexing the referent, and thus treats agreement as ‘double indexation’ (Croft Reference Croft2001: 229).
Agreement in Cognitive Grammar is analyzed as multiple symbolization: “That is, information about some entity is symbolized by more than one component structure within the same symbolic assembly and thus has multiple manifestations in a single complex expression” (Langacker Reference Langacker2008: 188). Agreement is a matter of the same information being symbolized in multiple places and thus is a special case of the conceptual overlap characteristic of all grammatical constructions (Langacker Reference Langacker2008: 347). Multiple symbolization suggests a Place and placing account of signed language agreement as a special type of conceptual overlap. As we have shown, the predominant way conceptual overlap is symbolized in these constructions is by phonological overlap. Signed languages have several types of constructions in which agreeing elements are symbolized by phonological overlap of Places. The schematic description of one type consists of a verb of transfer consisting of two schematic Places, phonologically expressed by the beginning and ending locations. Semantically, the Places are specified only for agent (beginning Place) and recipient (ending Place). These verb-internal Places are elaborated externally by nominal Places which have been fully elaborated, typically in the previous discourse.
An example of this type of agreement construction in LSA occurs in a narrative about a famous event in Argentina. The signer says, “This man, Lagomarsino, the one who gave the gun to Nisman …” The signer first points to a location in front and slightly to her right, creating a Place, which for the moment remains schematic: We don’t know what or who this Place refers to. She then signs MAN, a body-anchored sign produced at the mouth. Next, she places the sign PERSON at the newly created Place. She then fingerspells the name Lagomarsino followed by a relative marker meaning, ‘the one who’, directed at the Place. Finally, she signs the directional verb GIVE, moving from the Place to a location on her left.
Figure 16.11 diagrams this excerpt. The solid line (a) is the first pointing construction which creates a Place (b). Line (c) represents the placing of PERSON. Line (d) indicates the relative marker directed at the Place. Finally, circle (e) shows the initial location of the verb GIVE (indicated by an arrow), and (f) shows the final location.
Figure 16.11 Lagomarsino discourse segment
Figure 16.12 depicts the semantic pole of the structures in this discourse segment. The arrows indicate the appearance of Place structures across the segment. A semantically schematic Place is created by pointing. Body-anchored MAN elaborates the entity type; we now know that the Place refers to a man. PERSON, placed at the man-Place, provides phonological substance to the location of the Place. Fingerspelled “Lagomarsino” fully elaborates the Place: We now know the referent of the Place. The relative marker, placed at the Lagomarsino-Place, tells us that the referent at this Place is the one who will be doing something. Finally, we learn that Lagomarsino gave a gun (to the person who will be described in the subsequent discourse frame). The initial phonological location of GIVE is placed at the Lagomarsino-Place.
Figure 16.12 Lagomarsino semantic pole
Figure 16.13 depicts the semantic and phonological correspondences. The semantic poles of the initial Place, MAN, PERSON, Lagomarsino, the head of the relative markers, and the agent of GIVE map onto the same conceptual entity. At the bottom of the diagram, the phonological pole correspondences are shown: The initial Place, PERSON, the head of the relative marker, and the agent of GIVE (its initial location) are produced in the same spatial location. MAN is body-anchored and thus has a different phonological location (near the mouth), and Lagomarsino is fingerspelled at a location in neutral signing space.
Figure 16.13 Lagomarsino semantic and phonological poles
A recurrent feature of multiple symbolization or so-called agreement constructions in signed languages is the instantiation of a schematic Place to identify verb arguments: Conceptual overlap or semantic co-reference is symbolized by phonological overlap. This double overlap for the Lagomarsino example is shown in Figure 16.14. The initial Place structure (created by a pointing construction), placed PERSON, the relative marker, and the initial symbolic substructure (agent) of GIVE all map onto the same entity in conceptual space – Lagomarsino. They also map onto the same location in phonological space.
Figure 16.14 Double overlap in multiple symbolization
16.4.6 Placing-the-Signer Constructions
The previous sections presented Place as a symbolic structure and introduced the concept of placing, in which the placed linguistic element was a sign. Placing can be extended to include the signer as a symbolic structure (Wilcox et al. Reference Wilcox, Martínez, Morales, Jucker and Hausendorf2022).
Dialogue in narrative can be presented either as a third-person report (indirect quotation) or as first-person (direct quotation) (Chafe Reference Chafe and Tannen1982). Speakers mark these constructed dialogues with conventional grammatical constructions, or by taking on the voices of characters by changes in pitch, voice quality, and prosody (Schiffrin Reference Schiffrin1981; Tannen Reference Tannen and Coulmas1986). In doing so, the speaker is said to ‘take the point of view’ of a character in the narrative.
Just as speakers have ways of presenting a point of view by taking on the vocal and behavioral qualities of characters, signers use their whole bodies and the space surrounding them to convey viewpoint in reported dialogue. Padden (Reference Padden and Padden1986) offers an example, depicted in Figure 16.15. The signer says, “The husband goes, ‘Really, I didn’t mean it.’” In the first frame the signer faces her actual interlocutor and signs HUSBAND, identifying who will be speaking in the next sequence. The next four frames present the constructed dialogue REALLY ME NOT MEAN “Really, I didn’t mean it” as signed by the husband. To mark the constructed dialogue, the signer shifts her body to the right and directs her eye gaze at the husband’s virtual addressee.
These constructions in signed languages tend to include one or more of these phonological features: (i) a change in body orientation; (ii) a change in eye gaze direction; and (iii) a change in deixis (the body of the signer is rearranged to take somebody else’s point of view). These constructions also exhibit some or all of the following semantic features (Engberg-Pedersen Reference Engberg-Pedersen1993): (i) shifted reference: the use of pronouns to refer to somebody other than the sender/narrator; (ii) shifted attribution of expressive elements: the use of the signer’s face and/or body posture to express emotions or attitudes of somebody other than the sender/narrator in the context of utterance; and (iii) shifted locus: the use of the sender/narrator locus for somebody other than the sender/narrator.
Not only are signs symbolic structures that may be placed but the signer may also function as a symbolic structure, and in these cases the signer can move about, occupying different meaningful locations (Wilcox et al. Reference Wilcox, Martínez, Morales, Jucker and Hausendorf2022). In these cases, the signer is a symbolic structure which can be placed, either to create a Place or to recruit an existing Place. Such placing-the-signer constructions are used in narrative reporting of dialogue and events.
Signed languages are, quite literally, face-to-face visual languages. In signed language interaction, the canonical communication configuration is for one signer to face another signer at some culturally determined distance. Between the two is a line of sight. This arrangement can be called the canonical interactional configuration. In addition to this canonical configuration, signers adhere to two conversational principles for effective visual communication: (1) reduce excessive moving around from the point of view of the interlocutor, and (2) make your signs as visible as possible.
When narrating a story, the canonical conversational configuration and communicative principles constrain the signer; the signer is not free to occupy any location whatsoever, and the signs must remain visible. It may not seem obvious at first why we analyze this strategy for expressing reported dialogue as placing the signer: In what sense has the signer in Figure 16.15 been spatially ‘placed’? An instructional video designed to teach students of Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) how a single signer reports interactional dialogue illustrates how placing the signer works. In this video the instructor, Eduardo (on the right), and his colleague, Leonardo (on the left), first demonstrate a signed dialogue as it would actually take place between two interlocutors, maintaining the face-to-face canonical interactional configuration (Figure 16.16).
Figure 16.16 Demonstration of canonical two-person interaction
Eduardo then shows how the same interaction would be presented by a single narrator with reported dialogue (Figure 16.17). The simplest and most realistic way for a narrator to present a two-person reported dialogue to an audience would be to ‘act out’ the interaction by taking both roles – that is, by simply recreating Figure 16.16, moving between the spatial locations of the two participants. This would, however, violate the visual communication principles. Instead, Eduardo as the narrator remains in one location, and by changing the orientation of his body, the narrator alternately assumes the role of Eduardo or Leonardo.
A diagrammatic representation of the real two-person interaction and the strategy in which the signer is placed is depicted in Figure 16.18. The top portion (A) shows the original interaction with Leonardo (L) on the left and Eduardo (E) on the right. The construction in which the signer is placed to express the reported interaction is depicted in the lower portion (B). When Eduardo as narrator (N) presents Eduardo’s utterances in interaction with Leonardo, he rotates his orientation slightly to his right, indicating that he has assumed Eduardo’s Place. Virtually present Leonardo assumes a position directly in front of Eduardo to maintain the canonical interactional configuration. When presenting Leonardo’s utterances directed to Eduardo, Eduardo as narrator changes orientation in the opposite direction, thus indicating that the narrator has occupied the Leonardo Place; in doing so, he takes the role of Leonardo. Eduardo, as a virtual addressee, now assumes a position in front of Leonardo to maintain the canonical interactional configuration. Thus, the overall scene is presented with Eduardo ‘playing’ himself and Leonardo, who are alternately presented as virtual versions of themselves (represented by the dashed circles).
Figure 16.18 Placing the signer in reported dialogue constructions
In this instructional video we see the relation between a real two-person interaction and how a single narrator reports the interaction, maintaining the canonical interactional configuration while also abiding by the visual communication maxims. Using Figure 16.18 to depict the original dialogue underlying Figure 16.15 would have the husband (L) facing the actual addressee (E), as in the top portion of Figure 16.18. In the reported dialogue, the signer as narrator (N in the bottom portion of Figure 16.18) is placed by orienting herself to the left, thereby assuming the role of the husband (L). The husband addresses the virtual addressee, now located at E (dashed circle). The bottom portion (B) of Figure 16.18, minus the character labels (L and E), thus represents the schematic description of reported dialogue constructions. Change in orientation marks the placing of a narrator into two different Places, each representing a conceptualizer. In reported dialogue constructions, the conceptualizers are the conversational participants. By using schematic Place symbolic structures, the construction conceptually maps the semantic pole of the signer as a symbolic structure onto the semantic pole of a virtual discourse participant.
This description of a placing-the-signer construction has examined two-person interactions in reported dialogue. Placing the signer can also be used when presenting narrative about two characters interacting, and in narratives in which one character interacts with two different participants (Wilcox et al. Reference Wilcox, Martínez, Morales, Jucker and Hausendorf2022). One use of placing the signer occurs in an Argentine Sign Language translation made by the deaf Argentine poet and story teller Diego Morales of the short story Continuidad de los parques by Julio Cortázar. In one section of the story, a man and his lover are talking to each other. In this excerpt, the signer as narrator clearly takes the perspective of the woman and signs directly into the camera, asking a question of the man, “Why do you have a scratch on your cheek?,” which places the audience in the role of the man (Figure 16.19). The signer then replies, taking the perspective of the man, telling the woman “Stop kissing me on the cheek” (Figure 16.20). This now places the audience in the role of the woman. In the placing analysis, the narrator and the audience have conventional, specific phonological locations (the former is the location of the actual signer; the latter is the location of the camera), which are the phonological poles of two Place structures. These two Places are then mapped onto the two lovers, each assuming the canonical interaction configuration with their interlocutor. Just as in the other strategies, the narrator must assume both roles. As he alternates between the man and the woman, the audience also alternates between the two interlocutors – that is, the narrator and the audience Places are alternately conceptually mapped onto the man and the woman. This strategy of placing the audience onstage has a dramatic effect, since the audience ‘becomes’ the characters within the interaction. The audience ‘sees through the eyes’ of one of the characters and thus feels included in the dialogue.
Figure 16.19 Lovers’ interaction (woman)
Figure 16.20 Lovers’ interaction (man)
Placing-the-signer constructions conceptually map the semantic pole of the signer as a symbolic structure onto the semantic pole of a virtual discourse participant, bringing the signer and the participant into conceptual correspondence. The constructions accomplish this by mapping the phonological pole of the signer’s Place onto the discourse participant’s Place. Placing-the-signer constructions are the grammatical means used to indicate changes in the conceptualizer, corresponding to conversational participants in narratives and reported dialogue. Placing-the-signer constructions also appear in other grammatical constructions, including fictive discourse and fictive interaction (Jarque & Pascual Reference Jarque, Pascual, Dancygier, Lu and Verhagen2016), in which the Places may represent different stances of the same conceptualizer, passive constructions in ASL (Janzen et al. Reference Janzen, O’Dea and Shaffer2001), and evidentiality (Shaffer Reference Shaffer, Dancygier and Sweetser2012; Jarque & Pascual Reference Jarque and Pascual2015; Wilcox & Shaffer Reference Wilcox, Shaffer and Aikhenvald2017).
16.5 Summary
From its beginning with Stokoe’s pioneering work in the late 1950s, the field of signed language linguistics has blossomed into a rich body of research from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Linguists now apply a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of signed languages.
Recently, research adopting constructional approaches has begun to appear. This work examines the structure of sign grammar in terms of constructions consisting of conventional pairings of meaning and form containing both fixed, specific components and schematic components, organized in complex structured patterns. Constructional approaches are beginning to show that the categorical distinction between monomorphemic lexicon and multimorphemic classifier expressions is no longer tenable, revealing instead a continuum. Constructional approaches are also being applied to multi-word expressions, again revealing patterns with schematic and specific components integrated into conventional complex assemblies. A unique feature of signed languages is their meaningful use of space. Constructional approaches, such as the Cognitive Grammar analysis of Place and placing described in this chapter, reveal that schematic spatial locations are conventional components of constructions. Such analyses may lead to further insight into the use of multiple symbolization in the manifestation of so-called agreement expressions. In addition, signers and their spatial locations are symbolic components of signed constructions in constructed dialogue, fictive interaction, evidentiality, passive constructions, and more.
Much more research needs to be conducted adopting the constructional perspective. One area of research that usage-based constructional approaches can address is the issue of the linguistic status of components of signed languages constructions: to what extent locations of real and imaginary entities in the spatial environment are elements of linguistic structure, and whether these and other spatial aspects of constructions are fully linguistic or integrations of linguistic and gestural components.
