Depicting Space

What You Will Learn

This textbook moves from theoretical foundations through spatial anchoring systems, classifier predicates in depth, professional applications, and synthesis frameworks. The seventeen chapters build systematically, each introducing concepts that subsequent chapters extend and complicate. By the final chapter, readers possess both the analytical vocabulary and the practical protocols to assess and improve their own classifier production.

The core challenge addressed is cognitive: how do signers manage the simultaneous demands of spatial representation, temporal sequencing, and discourse coherence? Unlike spoken language, where words unfold one at a time in a narrow channel, signed language permits parallel processing. Both hands can represent different entities. The face carries grammatical information independent of the hands. The body can shift to become a character while the hands continue depicting objects in observer space. This book teaches readers to exploit that parallel architecture.

Classifier predicates sit at the heart of this spatial capacity. They are not frozen lexical items retrieved from memory but productive morphological systems built in real time. The signer selects a handshape representing a category of object, places it in space to establish a referent, moves it along a path to encode an event, and modifies its manner to convey aspect and intensity. This is not translation from English. This is thinking in a fundamentally different architecture.

Chapter Overview

Part One: Theoretical Foundations

Chapter One: Beyond the Basic Taxonomy

Moves past the introductory classification of entity classifiers, handling classifiers, body part classifiers, and size-and-shape specifiers (SASS) to examine the underlying principles that unify these categories and the gradient boundaries between them.

Chapter Two: The Cognitive Architecture of Classifier Selection

Examines why classifier selection is cognitively demanding, what makes it different from lexical retrieval, and how the visual-spatial modality shapes what is possible and what is difficult.

Chapter Three: Topographic Space Versus Syntactic Space

Distinguishes between space used to represent real-world spatial relationships (topographic) and space used to represent abstract grammatical relationships (syntactic), with implications for how classifiers function in each mode.

Part Two: Spatial Anchoring Systems

Chapter Four: Establishing and Maintaining Spatial Loci

Provides systematic techniques for placing referents in signing space, maintaining their locations across extended discourse, and managing the cognitive load of spatial tracking.

Chapter Five: Spatial Coherence Across Extended Discourse

Addresses the challenge of maintaining spatial relationships across multiple sentences and topic shifts, including strategies for refreshing, modifying, and abandoning established loci.

Chapter Six: Perspective and Viewpoint in Spatial Constructions

Examines the difference between observer viewpoint (looking at a scene from outside) and character viewpoint (experiencing a scene from inside), with attention to the grammatical resources for shifting between them.

Part Three: Classifier Predicates in Depth

Chapter Seven: Entity Classifiers and Semantic Features

Deep analysis of whole-entity classifiers, examining the semantic features that govern handshape selection and the morphological slots available for modification.

Chapter Eight: Handling Classifiers and Implied Objects

Explores how handling classifiers represent manipulation of objects, with attention to the absent referent problem and strategies for maintaining clarity about what is being handled.

Chapter Nine: Body Part Classifiers and Constructed Action

Examines the intersection of body part classifiers with constructed action, including the pragmatic and discourse functions of shifting into character space.

Chapter Ten: Size and Shape Specifiers as Productive Morphology

Analyzes SASS constructions as productive rather than lexicalized, with attention to the tracing movements and static configurations that specify dimensional properties.

Chapter Eleven: Movement Morphology in Classifier Predicates

Comprehensive treatment of path movement, manner movement, and their combination, including aspectual modifications and the encoding of temporal relationships.

Part Four: Precision Mapping in Professional Contexts

Chapter Twelve: Legal Settings and Spatial Accuracy

Addresses the demands of legal interpreting where spatial precision affects comprehension of testimony, with case studies and error analysis protocols specific to legal contexts.

Chapter Thirteen: Medical Interpreting and Anatomical Precision

Examines the challenges of medical interpreting where anatomical descriptions require exact three-dimensional representation and where classifier errors can affect patient understanding.

Chapter Fourteen: Technical and Scientific Interpreting

Explores interpreting for technical content where abstract processes must be made visually coherent, including strategies for depicting mechanisms, sequences, and causal relationships.

Chapter Fifteen: Error Analysis and Self-Correction Protocols

Provides systematic frameworks for identifying classifier errors, understanding their sources, and implementing correction strategies in both practice and live interpreting contexts.

Part Five: Synthesis and Application

Chapter Sixteen: Integrated Practice Frameworks

Synthesizes the preceding chapters into structured practice protocols, including observation exercises, production drills, and feedback mechanisms for continuous improvement.

Chapter Seventeen: Assessment and Continuing Development

Provides rubrics for self-assessment and peer evaluation, benchmarks for competency levels, and pathways for continuing professional development in classifier use.

Supplementary Materials

The textbook includes six appendices providing reference tools for both independent learners and classroom instruction. Appendix A establishes the notation system for transcribing spatial constructions in written form, including classifier types, spatial locations, movement paths, and modality markers. Appendix B provides practical exercises organized by chapter, progressing from analysis to production. Appendix C offers a comprehensive glossary of technical terms. Appendix D presents an annotated bibliography for further reading. Appendix E includes sample syllabi for both semester-length and intensive courses. Appendix F contains quick reference cards and observation guides.

The notation system deserves particular attention. Transcribing visual-spatial language in written form requires conventions that capture three-dimensional relationships on a two-dimensional page. The notation introduced here balances precision with readability, providing enough detail for analysis while remaining accessible to learners still developing their transcription skills.

For Whom This Book Is Written

This is not a beginning ASL textbook. Readers are expected to have completed at least intermediate ASL coursework or to possess equivalent proficiency. The book assumes familiarity with basic ASL phonology, the parametric structure of signs, classifier categories, and standard glossing conventions. Those without this foundation should complete introductory and intermediate ASL study before engaging with this material.

The primary audiences include advanced ASL students preparing for interpreter certification, working interpreters seeking to refine their classifier use, ASL instructors developing curriculum for upper-level courses, interpreter educators designing training programs, Deaf education professionals, and researchers in sign language linguistics. The text is also appropriate for native signers who want explicit vocabulary for analyzing what they do intuitively.

About the Authors

Janna Sweenie, MA has been teaching American Sign Language at New York University for over 35 years and created the ASL 5 course for the NYU minor in American Sign Language. She served as Program Coordinator for American Sign Language at NYU from 2017-2020 and previously served as Interim Director for the program. Her Master's degree is in Deafness Rehabilitation from NYU. She is an Iowa School for the Deaf graduate, born Deaf in Council Bluffs. Janna has been a consultant for Microsoft, Google, and New York City area museums. She is a two-time recipient of the NYU Steinhardt School, Applied Psychology Department, Administrator Award. For the last 18 years, she has served as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor for the Deaf in the State of New York Department of Education.

David Boles, MFA is a multidisciplinary creative professional based in New York City with over four decades of experience as an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, where he trained at the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Graduate Theatre Studies. He has taught American Sign Language at New York University, Public Health at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and English and Literary Criticism at multiple institutions. He founded David Boles Books Writing and Publishing in 1975. His ASL textbooks with Janna Sweenie include Hand Jive: American Sign Language for Real Life, Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1, Day One: Learning American Sign Language in 24 Hours, Hardcore ASL Textbook for Levels 1-7, and American Sign Language Level 5.

David and Janna have collaborated on ASL education for over two decades, combining academic rigor with practical application. Their work appears at HardcoreASL.com and BolesBooks.com.

Excerpt: The Core Challenge

Classifier predicates require simultaneous attention to multiple dimensions: the handshape must match the semantic category of the referent, the location must correspond to established or inferable spatial relationships, the movement must encode the appropriate path and manner, and the non-manual markers must provide the grammatical frame. Spoken language distributes this information across sequential words and phrases. Signed language compresses it into simultaneous layers.

This compression is both ASL's expressive power and its learning challenge. A single classifier predicate can convey information that would require an entire sentence in English: the type of entity, its location relative to other entities, the path it traveled, the manner of its movement, and the speaker's evaluation of the event. Mastering this compression requires not just knowledge of the components but fluent integration of them in real-time production.