Body partitioning and real-space blends

This article examines the partitionable zones of the body available to ASL signers. These zones are the body subparts that can participate in mappings that create blends (Fauconnier and Turner 1996) that have as one input real space, a mental space built by perceptual processes (Liddell 1995). One type of real-space blend produced in ASL discourse is used to demonstrate actions, and such blends contain at least one visible element when mappings involve the signer's body (Liddell 1998). When the signer is part of such a blend, a visible \actor\ results. Information accessible from these blends is increased when the signer produces other visible elements in addition to the \actor\. This increase depends, among other things, on the partitionability of the manual articulators and the face. Without these partitionable zones, conventional ways of building real-space blends are not possible.