An Outline of the Basic Structure of Finnish Sign Language Tommi Jantunen, University of Jyväskylä (Draft, December 2009)

The sections Basic morphology and lexicon and Basic syntax of this draft will appear in Takkinen, R.; Jantunen, T. & Ahonen, O. (to appear). Finnish Sign Language. In J. Hansen, B. McGregor & G. De Glerck (eds.), World's Sign Languages. In preparation for publication. An outline of the basic structure of Finnish Sign Language Tommi Jantunen, University of Jyväskylä (draft, December 2009) The modern linguistic research into Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) began in the early 1980s. During the past thirty years, the most common research areas have included phonology, morphology and lexicon (e.g. Rissanen 1985, 1998; Pimiä & Rissanen 1987; Takkinen 2002; Fuchs 2004; Jantunen 2008a, forthcoming), acquisition (e.g. Takkinen 1995, 2002), onomastics (e.g. Rainò 2004), history and change (e.g. Jantunen 2001, 2003), and sociolinguistic aspects of FinSL (e.g. Hoyer 2000, 2004). The lexicon has also been studied from the perspective of compiling dictionaries (e.g. Suomalaisen viittomakielen perussanakirja 1998; Numeroita ja lukumäärien ilmaisuja 2002). As a whole, the field of FinSL research has continuously expanded, and the current emerging research areas include, for instance, the research into the teaching and learning of FinSL as a second language. However, FinSL still lacks a comprehensive syntactic description. The first studies focusing on FinSL syntax in particular have been completed only recently (Jantunen 2007, 2008ab). Basic phonology Phonology is the most researched area of FinSL structure. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that of a total of four doctoral dissertations completed to date (Takkinen 2002, Fuchs 2004, Rainò 2004, Jantunen 2008a), three – Takkinen's, Fuchs' and Jan- tunen's – have dealt explicitly with phonology. Most of the phonological research has centered on the investigation and listing of simultaneously occurring basic units (i.e. handshapes, places of articulation, movements etc.). Sequential phonological issues (e.g. phonetic and phonological processes and the syllable) have come to be studied only recently (Fuchs 2004; Jantunen 2008a; Jantunen & Takkinen 2010). This section outlines the basics of FinSL phonology. The emphasis of the discussion is on the generally most accepted issues. Basic phonological units are not presented in detail. The basic structure of signs FinSL signs are generally agreed to be composed of at least three structural phonological components: the handshape, the place of articulation, and the movement. Minimal pairs can be found with respect to all three components: • BLACK ~ TO-REMEMBER (handshapes flat B-hand and fist A-hand) • TO-KNOW ~ TO-BEG (places of articulation forehead and cheek) • BLACK ~ TO-KNOW (movements straight and repeated straight). Depending on the researcher, also the orientation of the hand and fingers (e.g THANK- YOU with palm up ~ CHILDREN with palm down) and the nonmanual element (cf. FOREIGN-LANDS with the Finnish derivative mouthing ulkom ~ TO-HAVE-AFFAIR with the FinSL based mouth gesture thh; see below) have been analysed as basic phonological components. Signs are distinguished also by the number of participating hands 2 (e.g. one handed THANK-YOU ~ two handed TO-PRESENT). However, usually the number of hands is not considerd to be a phonological parameter in FinSL. The number of phonological basic units in FinSL has raised some discussion. Dif- ferent views are summarised in Table 1. Suomalaisen viittomakielen Rissanen (1985) perussanakirja (1998) Takkinen (2002) Rainò (2004) Savolainen (2006a) Handshape: 37 83 109 41 46;70 Place of articulation: 19 15 - 19< 14;200 Movement: 24 6 - ? 30;62 Orientation: - - - - 17;44 Nonmanual element: - 30 mouth gestures - - 40;40 Table 1. Proposals for the number of basic phonological units in FinSL. The variation displayed in Table 1 is partly explained by the different theoretical frameworks used by different researchers. For example, Rissanen (1985) considers all handshapes, places of articulation and movements to be abstract phonemic units; Rainò's (2004) view adds to that of Rissanen. In contrast, both Takkinen (2002) and Savolainen (2006a) approach basic units from a more phonetic, that is, concrete perspective. Note that in the column presenting Savolainen's data the first number refers to the number of basic units found in the lexicon of the so-called frozen signs. The latter number (after the semi-colon) refers to the number of units found in the lexicon of poly- synthetic signs (more on this lexicographical division, see e.g. Suomalaisen viittomakielen perussanakirja 1998). The most common handshapes in FinSL are the flat hand (B), the fist hand (A/S) and the pointing index finger hand (G). They are structurally the simplest handshapes in FinSL; they are used also as classificatory elements (e.g. CL-B- 'inanimate rectangular object'), and in SASSes (e.g. SASS-B- 'flat surface') (see Basic morphology and lexicon). The most common place of articulation in FinSL is the neutral space in front of the signer. Other main places of articulation are the head, torso, and the arm and the hand part of the nondominant hand. The most common movement type in FinSL is the simple straight movement. Complex movements (e.g. combinations of path and local movements) tend to simplify in production (Jantunen 2006). In general, movements in FinSL can be either manually and/or nonmanually produced (cf. NICE that contains a simple nonmanual body movement; cf. also mouth movements). Orientions and nonmanual elements have not been extensively studied in FinSL. However, concerning the latter, it is generally agreed that the most common nonmanual element in FinSL is the mouth movement or posture occurring with signs. These movements or postures are divided into two main classes: FinSL specific mouth gestures and spoken or written Finnish influenced mouthings (typically the beginnings of semantically corresponding unspoken Finnish words). Some mouth gestures can be as- signed a status of a derivational element (Rainò 2001; cf. Basic morphology and lexicon). Phonetic and phonological processes Phonetic and phonological processes have been studied by Fuchs (2004) and Jantunen (2008a). Fuchs' analysis shows that FinSL exhibits similar phonetic and phonological processes that have been previously attested, for example, in American Sign Language (see Liddell & Johnson 1989): for example, handshape assimilation between two adja- cent signs (most commonly the change of the first person indicating G-handshape into 3 B-handshape from the influence of the immediately preceding or following sign), neu- tralisation of contact, and processes affecting the nondominant hand (e.g. weak hand copy). Important findings in Fuchs' study are the observations that there occurs a small recoil movement at the end of many FinSL signs and that in general the phonetic complexity and articulatory energy tend to reduce towards the end of the production of a sign. Jantunen's analysis has focused on the investigation of movement epenthesis in signs that contain no movement in their citation form. These include FinSL numerals from 0 to 8, and most hand alphabets. Jantunen has shown that, when used as names for numbers or letters, movementless numerals and handshapes are added a short straight phonological movement. The movement epenthesis is also a diachronic process. For example, the original pantomimic signs for LEATHER and HEAT have come to be produced with a straight phonological movement in their modern form. The syllable FinSL syllables have been studied by Jantunen (2007a, 2008a; also Jantunen & Takki- nen 2010). The syllable in FinSL is defined as a sequence of sign stream that corres- ponds to one manual and/or non-manual sequential phonological movement. There are four structural syllable types in FinSL: syllables with one, two, three, and four weight units (cf. signs BLACK, CULTURE, TO-GO, and DOES-NOT-KNOW-HIM/HER, re- spectively). The number of weight units correlates with the phonological complexity of movement, that is, with the number of joints and articulators involved in the production of phonological movement (see Jantunen 2006). The syllable is used in FinSL to deter- mine the phonological length of signs, typically 1–2 syllables. In general, a bit over 60% of FinSL signs are monosyllables (e.g. BLACK), circa 35% are disyllables (e.g. TO-KNOW), and less than 2% are trisyllables (e.g. HAPPY). Basic morphology and lexicon This section presents an overview of the basic morphology and lexicon in FinSL. The perspective of the discussion is that of main word-classes (cf. nouns, verbs, and adjec- tives) which are the most researched area of FinSL morphology. Minor word-classes (e.g. adverbs, numerals, and particles; cf. also gestures) are not discussed due to lack of research into them. For the same reason, derivational and inflectional processes are not dealt with explicitly either (see, however, Rissanen 1985, 1998; Rainò 2001). The general framework of the discussion is that presented by Jantunen (2007b, 2008ab, forthcoming) whose work, in turn, is based on Rissanen (1998) and Liddell (2003); the same framework forms the basis also for the current syntactic research into FinSL (see Basic syntax). For other studies on FinSL word-classes, see Rissanen (1985, 1998), Rainò (2004) and Takkinen (2008). The overall composition of FinSL lexicon is displayed schematically in Figure 1. The discussion on word-classes concerns only the signs belonging to the two inner circles in the Figure (i.e. word-like signs and signs including gestural components). The signs belonging to the two outer circles represent gestures (i.e. emblems and pantomimic gestures) that cannot be meaningfully divided into word-classes. 4 {Figure 1. The overall composition of FinSL lexicon.} FinSL has two main word-classes, nominals and verbals. Superficially, a prototypical nominal sign resembles the typological prototype of a noun; and many verbals resemble spoken language verbs. However, definitionally the categories of nominals and verbals are broader than those of typical nouns and verbs. For example, both nominals and verbals include also property signs as members (cf.

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