Use and functions of spatial planes in Catalan Sign Language (LSC) discourse

Abstract

While the phonological description of spatial planes which configure signing space is very detailed (Brentari 1998; Liddell and Johnson 1989; Sandler 1989), our knowledge of its use and functions at the discourse level is still very limited. This article aims at offering a description of the use of the spatial planes in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). It provides a unified treatment of different linguistic phenomena that have been hitherto described separately in the sign language literature, namely hierarchical relations, locatives, as well as other aspects that have not yet been the subject of research neither in LSC nor in other signed languages, such as the encoding of specificity. As shown, the features found in two of the three spatial planes as described in the phonological literature are also relevant beyond the sentence level and they serve distinctive discourse functions.