Space in Danish Sign Language by Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen (review)

REVIEW Space in Danish Sign Language, Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen. 1993. Hamburg: Signum Verlag. (Intemational Studies on Sign Language &Communication of the Deaf, Vol. 19, Prillwitz ed.) 16.2 X23.3cm. 406pp. ISBN 3-927731-45-5. Hard cover. This volume, Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen's published doctoral dissertation (Copenhagen University, 1991), is thoroughly executed and broad in its coverage; some 250 references are cited. It marks the continuation of efforts by linguists to show that signed languages of deaf people do indeed possess the characteristics of languages generally, but it also notes some of the differences that different modes of expression and reception inevitably entail. The book is divided into four parts: Introduction, Discourse and Space, Verbs and Space, and Space in Danish Sign Language . The purpose is stated on the first page (13) of the Introduction : The linguistic analyses of signed languages seek to find their characteristics as languages and to test universal claims about language structure. The three parts following the 47-page Introduction present copious examples of DSL utterances (glosses rendered in English, but a few in the first chapter are glossed with both Danish and English words). The concluding paragraph (318) sums up the author's findings , that while DSL may not make as many differentiations in its pronoun system as do spoken languages, yet in the systems of verb agreement and semantic-pragmatic functions, by making excellent use of the unique [spatial] means of expression that signers have at hand, DSL makes more differentiations than do spoken languages. This reviewer's assessment of the whole is divided: As an example of linguistic analysis it cannot be faulted; it makes point after point with well chosen examples. As a test of universal @1993 Linstok Press, Inc. Note inside front cover ISSN 0302-1475 Review claims about language structure, however, it fails, as do all other such analyses. Universal claims-or more properly, claims that this or that characteristic can be found in all languages-are untestable . They stand as untested claims until a language is found that fails to contain the hypothesized "universal" feature; but then the question resurfaces: Is that language "truly" a language? -and defenders of determinism and universals may, as used to be the case with signed languages, deny the candidate deserves language status. Absence of evidence, however, does not prove a negative. The finding that a signed language does not differentiate second person from third person pronouns (14), for example, can be interpreted as invalidating the claim that such pronoun differentiation is universal; or it can be interpreted-as was done for decades-to disqualify signing as language. The author rejects the latter alternative, of course, and suggests that structure alone may not be the only way to identify a natural language: Sign linguists take as their point of departure that signed languages are natural languages, inthe sense that they are the primary means of communication among human beings ineveryday situation [sic] of life and that they are not parasitic on any other means of communication. (13) The question is whether the enlightened anthropological view of languages and their human significance, which Engberg-Pedersen takes, can be held simultaneously with the narrower view, of current linguistic theory, that languages are all and everywhere the same because they share certain highly abstract, "universal " structural characteristics, regardless of the way their users employ them. The opposition between these views of language underlies the whole enterprise. In the linguistic view, a native speaker's ability to identify an expression as grammatical or not implies rigid set logic: Any given utterance is either grammatical or it is not (A # not-A). It seems that Engberg-Pedersen is not satisfied with this categorical distinction either, for she turns to Osherson and Smith's (1981) discussion of fuzzy set theory. But their discussion also fails to satisfy her and explain her data satisfactorily because, "they explicitly disregard context" (26f). She SLS 81 Space in Danish Sign Language finds more useful the theory of prototypicality proposed by Lakoff (references to 1980, 1986 & 1987 works) and other cognitive linguists, according to which some utterances are perceived as unmistakably acceptable and others are seen to diverge slightly or greatly from them without thereby...