CL, Space, and Role Shift
: The Seven Items of “Basic Sign Language Grammar” in Japan’s Training Curriculum

1. The MHLW notice behind the training courses

If you trace the textbooks handed out in sign-language courses and the explanations instructors give back to their source, you arrive at a single MHLW notice: Notice No. 0626-1 of June 26, 2023, “On the Training Curriculum for Sign-Language Volunteers and Sign-Language Interpreters”. Attachment 1 of this notice is the training curriculum, and Attachment 2 is the “Course of Study for Sign-Language Volunteers and Sign-Language Interpreters”. The goals and content of each course are laid out in Attachment 2.

The notice also sets how the courses are built. Sign-language volunteers take an introductory course of 35 hours plus a basic course of 35 hours, 70 hours in total. Sign-language interpreters take a fundamental course of 56 hours plus an applied course of 57 hours, 113 hours in total. The old curriculum also had a 20-hour practical course for interpreters; the current one does not.

Volunteer training became 10 hours shorter, and interpreter training gained 23 hours. More of the time now goes to training interpreters.

2. The two courses where the seven items appear

The MHLW curriculum (2023 notice, Attachment 2) has a numbered list in two places: “Basic Grammar of Sign Language” in the volunteer basic course (15 hours) and “Developing Interpreting Ability (I)” in the interpreter fundamental course (10.5 hours). The items are almost the same; only item 2 is worded differently.

The difference in item 2 looks small, but the volunteer side uses the everyday wording “who” and “to whom,” while the interpreter side uses the grammatical term “case marking.” You can read it as the same content under two names, or as a sign that the two lists have different learners in mind.

One more point: these seven items are part of the volunteer course too. They are not reserved for people who go on to become interpreters. Fifteen of the 35 hours of the volunteer basic course go to this subject, which is not a small share of the time.

3. Position and direction carry meaning

Use of space

The signer places the people and things in the conversation in the space in front of them. Those places stay put for the rest of the conversation, and the signer can refer back to them later by pointing or by the direction of a movement. Where Japanese would repeat “Mr. A” and “Ms. B” by name, sign language can use position instead.

Use of pointing

Pointing is not just a gesture that shows a direction; it determines who you are talking about. The notes in the MHLW curriculum (2023 notice, Attachment 2) set a notation for it, with three categories.

Expressing “who” and “to whom” (changes in the direction of movement)

Once positions are set in space, the direction of a movement can carry “who does what to whom.” What particles do in Japanese, direction does in sign language. The interpreter list calls this “case marking (movement and direction).”

The MHLW curriculum (2023 notice, Attachment 2) only names the item and gives no example signs. For verbs of this type, a research presentation from the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) explains that they “express the ‘positions’ of the subject and object through ‘movement’ or ‘hand orientation’” and gives examples such as SELL, BUY, HELP, ASSIST, and REFUSE.

Simultaneous expression (using both hands)

Spoken language comes out in a single line, one word after another. With two hands, a signer can hold one hand in place while the other moves: the left hand keeps a place or an object while the right hand shows what happens there. Something that takes two sentences in Japanese can fit into a single form.

Role switching (role shift)

In a story with two characters, the signer takes turns becoming each of them. It shows whose line it is without adding “and then A said.” The notes describe it as using movement of the upper body together with facial expression.

4. How the notes explain the terms

The MHLW curriculum (2023 notice, Attachment 2) has notes for each table, and they explain what CL, pointing, and role shift mean.

CL (classifiers)

The notes describe CL as “a way of expressing things by treating particular handshapes as objects” and explain that “the appropriate handshape is chosen according to the category the object belongs to.” In other words, the handshape works as a marker of a category rather than as a word. Since the handshape changes with what it stands for, the definition itself tells you this is not something to memorize as vocabulary.

Pointing (pt1, pt2, pt3)

The notes say that “pointing to oneself is written ‘pt1,’ pointing to the conversation partner ‘pt2,’ and pointing to any other referent ‘pt3.’” This notation lines up with grammatical person. It overlaps with first, second, and third person, but the notice does not use the word “person”; it sorts pointing by what is pointed at.

Role shift

The notes define it as “a way of depicting speech and actions, when talking about one’s own experience or a scene from a film, by the signer becoming a particular person or animal,” done “mainly by moving the upper body forward, backward, left, and right, and by using different facial expressions.”

5. Twenty-five years ago there were 14 items

The current notice replaced and abolished Notice No. 63 of July 24, 1998. The old notice also had a course called “Basic Grammar of Sign Language” in the volunteer basic course, and it listed 14 items.

Going from 14 to 7 does not mean half the items were dropped. Items that were split into stages, such as “case marking ①–⑤” and “use of space ①–③,” are now grouped into one, as “case marking (movement and direction)” and “use of space.”

On the other hand, some terms no longer appear by name among the current seven.

“Substitution” needs a note. The word is not among the current seven items. The same word appears in the goals of the interpreter fundamental course’s “Developing Interpreting Ability (II)” as “summarizing ability (grasping the main points of what is said; the ability to substitute words)”. It sits under the skill of summarizing what you hear rather than under sign-language grammar. The notice does not say, however, that it was “moved from grammar to summarizing.” Please read this as two entries in two separate notices, set side by side.

The longer you have been learning sign language, the more likely it is that the terms you remember come from the old curriculum. The terms you learn depend on the textbook your course used and on when your instructor trained.

6. Where to learn them

The seven items are a course subject, so there are not many ways in for self-study. Here is what I was able to confirm.

• Municipal and prefectural training courses. This subject is part of the basic course of sign-language volunteer training. Many places recruit about once a year, and the courses are run by local governments or organizations they commission
• Videos from the National Sign Language Training Center (a social welfare corporation). The “Remote Sign Language Video Service Portal” offers lecture videos and sign-language teaching videos. The center also runs the “Shuwa o Manabō, Shuwa de Hanasō video viewing system”
• Textbook. “Shuwa Hōshiin Yōsei Tekisuto: Shuwa o Manabō, Shuwa de Hanasō (fully revised edition)” (September 2023, A4, 166 pages) is used in training courses

Closing

The seven items sit in the same form in both the volunteer basic course and the interpreter fundamental course. Apart from learning vocabulary, the use of space, the direction of movement, and role switching are listed as things to spend course time on. The MHLW curriculum (2023 notice, Attachment 2) presents them only through item names and the definitions in the notes, and does not prescribe how to teach them.

What I have written here is one way of organizing the primary sources. How courses are run and which materials they use vary by region, and the same course name can carry different weight in different places. Instructors also call the seven items by different names. Where the course you are taking differs from this article, please follow your course.