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This chapter combines and relates new findings on spatial structuring in two areas o f investigation, spoken language and signed language. Linguistic research to date has determined many of the factors that structure the spatial schemas found across spoken languages (e.g., Bennett, 1975; Clark, 1973; Fillmore, 1968; Gruber, 1976, Herskovits, 1982; Jackendoff, 1983; Leech, 1969, Zubin & Svorou, 1984, as well as myself, Talmy, 1983,2000a, 2000b). It is now feasible to integrate these factors and to determine the comprehensive system they constitute for spatial structuring in spoken language. This system is characterized by several features. With respect to constituency, there is a relatively closed, universally available inventory o f fundamental spatial elements that in combination form whole schemas. There is a relatively closed set of categories in which these elements appear. And there is a relatively closed, small number o f particular elements in each category, hence, o f spatial distinctions that each category can ever mark. With respect to synthesis, selected elements of the inventory are combined in specific arrangements to make up the whole schemas represented by closed-class spatial forms. Each such whole schema that a closed-class form represents is thus a “prepackaged” bundling together o f certain elements in a particular arrangement. Each language has in its lexicon a relatively closed set o f such prepackaged schemas (larger than that o f spatial closed-class forms, due to polysemy) that a speaker must select among in depicting a spatial scene. Finally, with respect to the whole schemas themselves, these schemas can undergo a certain set o f processes that extend or deform them. Such processes are perhaps part o f the overall system so that a language’s relatively closed set o f spatial schemas can fit more spatial scenes.
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