1.2. Location

The major locations for the articulation of signs are head, torso, arm, and non-dominant hand (h2). Setting further specifies a major location as either being ipsilateral (right side of a right-handed signer), contralateral (left side of a right-handed signer), low, high, contact, proximal, and distal. Moreover, each location can be specified with an exact setting unique to the major location (e.g. eyes is an exact setting of the major location head). Below, a table with all locations and all exact settings are presented with examples.

(adapted and expanded from Makaroğlu & Dikyuva 2017)

Often the lexical items involve the torso as the major location, and for some signs the location of articulation is the head. Occasionally locations are the non-dominant hand and the arm. The non-dominant hand rarely serves as the major location while the arm is extremely exceptional.

          There are other exact settings that are also used very rarely. These are predominantly iconically motivated signs. For example, the exact setting of eyes appear in eye-related words such as eye, eyeglasses, teardrop, brow, and eyelashes (with the exception of december). Other such rarely occuring exact settings that serve as the setting for iconic signs are the body (e.g. cloth, shırt), the pelvis (e.g. swımsuıt), and the hips (e.g. shorts).