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We describe our approach as cognitive and functional, in that we are concerned with the learner’s mental processes o f analyzing events and signed utterances into components, with the aim of producing and comprehending utterances in communicative contexts. Our transcription system led us to reconsider the role o f iconicity in ASL and SLN, bringing us to the new approach to classifiers presented here. To be sure, handshapes and movement paths are conventionalized and schematized in natural sign languages, yet early learners can make use o f elements o f natural gesture as a “bootstrap” device in entering the formal systems o f the language. Research on both deaf and hearing toddlers has made it clear that there is no basic problem in using handshape and movement to make reference to similar objects and events across situations; and the same is true o f hearing adult learners. However, although the entry into a sign language is easily accessible, mastery requires coordinations on many levels. The sorts of handshapes that have come to be called “classifiers” enter into combination with a number o f simultaneous elements, using a range o f motions, articulators (hands, arms, eyes, face, body), postures, and temporal variables. Furthermore, in representing events in a signed language, the signer has options o f perspective and viewpoint, which provide for multiple means o f encoding the same event participants. “Classifier” handshapes are embedded in predicates and nouns, and serve to index or identify discourse elements on the basis o f various physical criteria. Thus their function is not so much to classify as to identify or designate.
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