Confluence of Space and Language in ASL

要用语言表达和编码视觉世界（即谈论我们所看到的），需要语言和空间认知之间有一个关键的接口。由于物理空间被直接用于对语言和空间关系进行编码，因此手语语言可以提供对该接口的独特见解。美国手语（ASL）与口语的不同之处在于，它是用手在空间中表达的，并由视觉系统感知。因此，美国手语也提供了一个机会来探索语言传达的情态如何影响语法编码的性质（例如，语言如何表达不同的语言关系）和语言处理的性质（人们如何实时解释和产生语言）。目前，我们对美国手语的语言处理知之甚少，而这些被提议的研究将是第一批调查在线视觉语言是如何被感知和理解的研究。这些研究探讨了在指称和空间领域使用空间表达语言对比的后果。具体来说，实验的重点是利用空间来表达共指关系、参照系和空间信息。本研究的主要目的是探讨手语中空间的语法化及其对语言加工的影响。该项目包含两条主要的探究线：1)空间回指的在线跟踪和2)使用空间来表示空间。第一组实验探讨了在实时处理过程中，签名者如何理解和维持指称物与其空间位置之间的联系。这些实验的结果将提供对手语所需的加工机制本质的洞察，并将有助于确定跨语言模态的参考加工的哪些方面。第二部分通过研究聋哑人如何从手语话语中创建空间心理模型，如何选择空间参考框架，以及聋哑人如何将物理手语空间与空间的心理表征结合起来，来研究使用空间来表征空间的后果。这些实验将阐明物理空间如何在语言上被操纵以传达位置信息，并将阐明在处理过程中如何解释这种空间结构。总之，这些结果将阐明语言和空间认知之间界面的本质。

To linguistically represent and encode the visual world (i.e., to talk about what we see) requires a crucial interface between language and spatial cognition. Signed languages can provide unique insight into this interface because physical space is used directly to encode linguistic and spatial relations. American Sign Language (ASL) differs from spoken languages in that it is expressed with the hands in space and perceived by the visual system. Thus, ASL also presents an opportunity to explore how the modality in which a language is conveyed affects the nature of grammatical encoding (e.g., how languages express different linguistic relations) and the nature of language processing (how people interpret and produce language in real time). Currently, very little is known about language processing in ASL, and the proposed studies will be some of the first to investigate how a visual language is perceived and understood on-line. The studies explore the ramifications of using space for expressing linguistic contrasts in referential and spatial domains. Specifically, the experiments focus on the use of space to express coreference relations, frames of reference, and spatial information. The major goal of the research is to explore the grammaticization of space in sign language and its impact on language processing. The project contains two primary lines of inquiry: 1) on-line tracking of spatial anaphora and 2) the use of space to represent space. The first group of experiments explore how signers understand and maintain the association between referents and their spatial loci during real time processing. The results of these experiments will provide insight into the nature of the processing mechanisms required for sign language and will help determine what aspects of referential processing hold across language modalities. The second line of experiments investigate the consequences of using space to represent space by investigating how deaf signers create spatia l mental models from signed discourse, how signers chose a spatial reference frame, and how signers integrate physical signing space with a mental representation of space. These experiments will illuminate how physical space is manipulated linguistically to communicate locative information and will clarify how such spatial structure is interpreted during processing. Together, these results will elucidate the nature of the interface between language and spatial cognition.