A Study Of Signs For Non-visual Concepts In Shanghai Variety Of Chinese Sign Language

This dissertation is based on the natural sign language of Shanghai Deaf People. We acquired videos of non-visual such as signs for names, action and attribute, and video clips of signed speeches in all circumstances. Based on these videos, an attempt was made to describe all non-visual signs in Shanghai Sign language(SSL), to analyze how SSL express non-visual signs, and reveal eventually the rules of signs for non-visual concepts in SSL.SSL expressed non-visual concepts in three ways: native conventional signs; loan signs from Chinese; signs expressing non-visual concepts indirectly. native conventional signs are most pervasive.Metaphor and metonymy are the two major forms of native conventional signs. They have been recognized as basic means of literary rhetoric for a long time. But as a matter of fact, it is more appropriate to say that they are main ways to extend the meaning of a word and are significant cognitive modes.As in spoken languages, metaphor in sign languages can be boiled down to mappings between source domain and target domain, based on resemblance. But metaphor in sign languages is the double mappings in essence: a metaphorical mapping from concrete to abstract conceptual domains and an iconic mapping between the concrete source domain and the linguistic forms that represent it. Time metaphor, orientation metaphor, body metaphor and entity metaphor are the four major kinds of metaphor in sign language.Besides metaphor, metonymy is another form to express non-visual concepts. In metonymy, the non-visual concept is substituted by its component or correlated association. It is a kind of mental association in essence. The key difference between metaphor and metonymy is that metaphor base on similarity and metonymy base on contiguity. We can also depict metonymy as the mapping between entity and its counterpart. Body metonymy, symbol metonymy, member metonymy, behavior metonymy and Chinese character metonymy are the five major kinds of metonymy in sign language.In a word, the basic rule of expressing non-visual concepts in sign language is to build mutual relations between entities and to cognize the undiscovered external world by what we already know. SSL borrow from Chinese when necessary. Every non-visual concept is bound to be expressed by visual means eventually, since SSL is a visual-manual language...