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

Home , Finland Swedish, Finnish Sign Language, Swedish Sign Language

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, respectively). 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 adjectives) 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.

{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. adjectives; see below). Moreover, the notion of verbal is thought to cover better than that of verb the semantically more phra- sal and sentence-like predicating expressions (see Type 3 verbals below). Nominals and verbals are defined by semantic and grammatical criteria. Semanti- cally, a prototypical nominal refers to an entity (e.g. GIRL, POLICE) whereas a prototypical verbal encodes the activity of an entity (e.g. TO-SIGN, TO-CATCH). Morpho- logically, only the members of the verbal class allow the information concerning the event structure (e.g. duration, repetition) and (perfective) aspect to be coded into their form (see Rissanen 1985, 1998). Event structure related information is displayed iconi- cally in the movement of the verbal (cf. reduplication and iteration; see Rissanen 1987), and in the nonmanual structure. Also perfective aspect can be expressed through the movement parameter of a verbal but in most cases it is indicated by cliticising or suffix- ing a semi-bound morpheme to the verbal (cf. signs ALREADY, READY, FINISH). Syntactically, the main feature that distinguishes nominals and verbals is their distribu- tion in the domain of structurally minimal declarative transitive clauses: only nominals can occur at the beginning of such clauses (more on word order, see Basic syntax). In addition to the above mentioned criteria, nominals and verbals are typically distinguished also by the nonmanual element (see Basic phonology): mouth gestures occur with verbals; mouthings occur both with verbals and nominals in which case the Finnish word indicates the sign's word-class (Rainò 2001). Adjective is not an independent word-class in FinSL. Signs denoting property are analysed semantically and grammatically either as marginal nominals or marginal verbals. For example, signs for color (e.g. RED, GREEN) classify as nominals: they refer to abstract 'color entities', they cannot display event structure or aspect related information in their form, and they can occur at the beginning of structurally minimal declarative transitive clauses. In contrast, signs expressing feelings and emotional states (e.g. HAPPY, ANGRY) are typically analysed as verbals: they express states (cf. stative verbals), they can code event structure related information in their form (e.g. 'be happy for a long time'), and, as other verbals, they cannot be the first constituent in a structurally minimal declarative transitive clause. Further support for the nonexistence of the word- class adjective as a grammatical category in FinSL is provided, for example, by the identical morphosyntactic marking of both "genetive attributes" (1a) and "adjective attributes" (1b) and predicating core-verbals (2a) and predicating property signs (2b):

(1) a. [BOY APPLE] 'boy's apple' b. [RED APPLE] 'red apple' (2) a. GIRL CRY 'Girl cries.' b. GIRL HAPPY 'Girl is happy.'

According to Rissanen (1998), nominals fall into two main subcategories that are lexical nominals and grammatical functors. The subcategory of lexical nominals consists of core-lexical nominals (e.g. GIRL), nominals that allow internal structural modification 5

(e.g. HOUSE), nominals with classificatory origin (e.g. BIRD), and lexical indices (e.g. pointings referring to persons). The subcategory of grammatical functors consists, for example, of classificatory handshapes, size and shape specifiers (SASSes), and topic marking indices (see also Transitive clause). Classificatory handshapes are bound morphemes that occur as fused elements with certain verbals (see Type 3 below); they have a syntactic function (see section Basic syntax). According to the most recent analysis (Jantunen, forthcoming), SASSes are grammatical elements that consist of a morphemic (semi-classificatory) handshape and a gradient gestural component realised by the parameters of movement, orientation, and place of articulation. SASSes can be cliticised to both nominals and verbals; when they are attached to verbals they function as nomi- nalisers (e.g. DRUM > TO-DRUM + both_hands:SASS-"half cylinder"; Rissanen 1998). Topic marking indices are in most cases pointings that occur at the end of the sentence initial topic constituent; their function is to establish the location of the topic so that it can be referred back within the text (Jantunen 2007b; see Topic-comment structure). According to Jantunen (2008b, forthcoming), verbals fall into three main subcategories: Type 1, 2, and 3 verbals (cf. Padden 1990; Rissanen 1998; Liddell 2003; Takki- nen 2008). Type 1 verbals consist of only a morphological component and are forma- tionally the most fixed type of FinSL verbals (e.g. TO-LIKE, TO-BEG). Type 2 verbals include both a morphological and a gestural component of which the latter allows the verbals to be directed meaningfully in space in order, for example, to indicate discource participants (e.g. TO-ASK, TO-LOOK-AT). Morphological and gestural components are present also in Type 3 verbals. In these verbals, the morphological component is a classificatory handshape morpheme whereas the gestural component functions to depict mainly topographic locations; it enables the iconic representation of, for example, figure and ground relationship. The class of Type 3 verbals consists of two morphologically distinct sign types. In the first type, the verbals include two different simultaneously fused morphemes: an "entity morpheme" realised as a handshape, and an existential morpheme realised as a short straight movement; the parameters of location and orientation are gradient gestural elements that can all be varied within the limits of the discource. In the second type, the verbals include only a morphemic handshape that refers either to the entity itself or to the way the entity is handled; all other structural parameters in these verbals are analysed as gradient and gestural. In general, Type 3 verbals belonging to the first subtype refer to the 'existence of an entity in a depicted location'. Verbals in the second subtype describe 'how an entity moves or how it is handled in a depicted location'.

Basic syntax

This section discusses the basics of FinSL syntax, hitherto studied only marginally. First, two main structurally minimal declarative clause types – intransitive and transitive clauses – containing Type 1 and 2 verbals are presented with a special focus on their word order. Second, the topic-comment structure, including also Type 3 verbals, is discussed. Finally, the basics of other functional sentence types are briefly presented. The discussion of word order and topic-comment structure is situated in the framework of Jantunen (2007b, 2008ab, forthcoming). The presentation of functional sentence types relies mainly on the research carried out by Rissanen (1985) and Savolainen (2006b).

Structurally minimal declarative clauses with Type 1 and 2 verbals

The term clause refers in this section to a structurally minimal syntactic unit that consists only of a predicating element and its core argument(s), that is, nominal element(s) whose presence is required by the semantics of the predicate. A prosodic well- formedness condition for declarative clauses in FinSL is that there are no pauses between the different constituents of the clause.

Intransitive clauses

Intransitive clauses are structures that are built around one-placed verbal (V) predicate and that contain one core argument called S-argument. The S-argument is a unit that refers to the single participant (prototypically the agent) in the situation encoded by the one-placed predicate. With respect to word order, intransitive clauses in FinSL all follow the scheme SV. Examples of isolated minimal FinSL intransitive clauses are given in (3):

(3) a. S[BABY] V1[TO-SLEEP] 'Baby sleeps.' b. S[COUPLE] V2[TO-DIVORCE] 'Couple divorced.'

The type of the verbal (1 or 2) does not affect the word order. In more textual clauses the S-argument may be omitted if its referent can be retrieved from the context (see Transitive clauses below).

Transitive clauses

Transitive clauses are structures that are built around the two-placed verbal predicate and that contain two core arguments. The core arguments are called A- and P- arguments. The A-argument is a unit that refers to the more active participant (prototypically the agent) in the situation encoded by the two-placed predicate. The P- argument is a unit that refers to the more passive participant in the situation (prototypically the patient). With respect to word order, the main rule of FinSL transitive clauses is that the A- argument always precedes the V. In isolated clauses, the A-argument precedes also the P-argument. The order of the P-argument and the V can be either VP or PV. Conse- quently, the resulting schemas for isolated transitive clauses in FinSL are AVP and APV. Examples of AVP structures are given in (4):

(4) a. A[WOMAN] V2[TO-VIDEOTAPE] P[MAN] 'Woman videotapes man.' b. A[BOY] V2[TO-KISS] P[GIRL] 'Boy kisses girl.'

Examples of APV structures are given in (5):

(5) a. A[GIRL] P[TV] V2[TO-LOOK-AT] 'Girls watches television.' b. A[TEACHER] P[BOY+B-INDEX-2] V1[TO-EXPLAIN] 'Teacher explains to boy.'

As with intransitive clauses, the type of the verbal (1 or 2) does not affect the word order in transitive clauses. If there is a possibility for an ambiguous reading, the P- argument can be cliticised a grammatical functor to disambiguate participant roles. In 7

(5b), this grammatical functor is a pointing element with a dative function (see Basic morphology and lexicon). In more textual transitive clauses, the P-argument can sometimes occur at the beginning of the clause, yet the order of A and V still follows the general rule. For example:

(6) P[BOOK] A[INDEX-1] V[TO-SEARCH] / TO-FIND / TO-SIGH-ON-RELIEF / ... 'I was looking for a book, and fortunatelly I found it. ...'

A typical trait in FinSL texts is to omit core arguments. In (6), this phenomenon is dem- onstrated by verbals TO-FIND (two-placed predicate) and TO-SIGH-ON-RELIEF (one- placed predicate). Syntactically, the verbals are analysed as structurally incomplete clauses.

Topic-comment structure

Topic-comment structure is commonly used in FinSL. The scheme of a minimal topic- comment structure is TOPXP/COMclause. The topic in this scheme is a clause-external left-detached nominal phrase (XP) whose function is to set an interpretative (e.g. spatial, temporal, or individual) framework for the following main predication, expressed by the comment clause (Chafe 1976). Topics in FinSL are marked syntactic-prosodically (i.e. by their sentence initial position, pause, and a non-manual feature "eyes widened and eyebrows raised") and sometimes morphologically (i.e. indexically; see example 7). In general, the FinSL topic-comment structure resembles topic-comment structures found in topic-prominent languages, for example, in Mandarin Chinese. Example (7) demonstrates a typical FinSL topic-comment structure in which the topic is an adjunct-like nominal phrase that sets a spatial framework for the following comment clause with the AVP order:

(7) TOP[NIGHT CLUB INDEX-3] / COM[INDEX-1 TO-WORK DOORMAN] 'That night club, I work (there) as a doorman.'

The topic may also be a seemingly core argument type constituent. For example:

(8) TOP[OWN-1 BABTISE AUNT] / COM[LIVE SWEDEN+INDEX-3] 'My godmother, (she) lives in Sweden.'

However, in (8) and in the cases similar to it, the topic is not given the status of a (topi- calised) core argument. Instead, it is analysed by following the general scheme of FinSL topic-comment structure as an independent syntactic constituent not belonging to the semantic-syntactic scope of the verbal predicate. The comment clause is interpreted as a structurally incomplete transitive clause (cf. example 6). Utterances containing Type 3 verbals are typically topic-comment structures in FinSL. For example:

(9) TOP[HOUSE-2] / COM[CL-B-"come to a stop"-4-2] 'Car (literally: rectangular object) stops near the house.'

Type 3 verbals are analysed syntactically as full head-marking (Nichols 1986) verbals, i.e. as full well-formed clauses. The classificatory handshapes (CL) fused into these verbals are interpreted as the predicate's syntactic core arguments. Their meaning is typically vague, yet it can be usually easily retrieved from the context or be lexically specified; for (9), the latter option means adding a lexical nominal CAR in front of the verbal in which case the structure as a whole is analysed as containing a chain of two 8

topics (i.e. 'house' and 'car'). With respect to word order, Type 3 verbals form a special class for they always occur sentence finally.

Functional sentence types

In addition to the declarative sentences discussed above, preliminary research has been carried out also on other functional sentence types, mainly negative and interrogative sentences (Rissanen 1985; Savolainen 2006b; also Mikkola 2004). Both types are presented below in terms of their main formal characteristics.

Negative sentences

The basic negative marker in FinSL sentences is a headshake, analysed formally as a negative operator (Rissanen 1985). The scope of the headshake can be the whole sentence or a shorter sequence; however, no matter where the headshake begins it tends to last to the end of the sentence. An important distributional restriction for the negative operator concerns the topic in topic-comment structures: topics cannot be layered with the negative operator. (Savolainen 2006b.) FinSL seems to lack a manual sentence or clause negator, that is, a negative sign meaning simply 'not'. There are negative signs in FinSL but they always convey some extra information; they are used mostly to express emphatic negation (e.g. ZERO, AB- SOLUTELY-NOT) or to predicate, for example, the nonexistence (e.g. NOT-EXIST) or noncompletiveness (e.g. NOT-YET) of an entity or an action, respectively. The existence of more than one manual negator in a sentence is possible yet not fully investi- gated. (Savolainen 2006b; cf. Mikkola 2004.)

Interrogative sentences

Also interrogative sentences are formed through nonmanual activity. The nonmanual interrogative operator has two main forms, one for polar (yes/no) questions and the other for content (wh-) questions. In the main polar question marker, the eyebrows are raised and the head tilts forward; another, yet pragmatically limited, option is to push the head forward. In the main content question marker, eyebrows are furrowed and the head tilts forward; it seems that pushing the head forward can be used as an alternative marker also in content questions. Moreover, the raising of eyebrows can be used to mark content questions too. The scope of the nonmanual interrogative operator is condi- tioned similarly to that of the negative operator, discussed above. (Rissanen 1985; Savolainen 2006b.) There is at least one sign (cf. particle) that can be used to mark both polar and content questions in FinSL. This is the PALM-UP gesture that has other functions too. Question words (e.g. WHO, WHAT, WHERE, HOW) are used with content questions and they too have other non-interrogative functions in FinSL. Syntactically, the question words can occur in various positions. However, in general the clause initial (after the topic) and clause final positions are the most typical. PALM-UP gesture is obligato- rily clause or sentence final. (Savolainen 2006b.)

Basic structure of texts

How FinSL texts are structured is not yet fully known (see, however, e.g. Rissanen 1992, 2002; Lukaszyck 2008; Jantunen, in preparation). However, some preliminary 9

observations can be made, especially from the point of view of information structure (cf. theme-rheme analysis) and cohesion. Let us briefly consider the following example that represents a pre-rehearsed everyday-style monologue (Suvi, article 4, example 2):

(10) l1: COMPUTER / INDEX-1 blending:(TO-TYPE-KEYBOARD) / super theme------theme1

l2: INDEX-1 blending:(TO-LOOK-AT-2up-2down / ------theme1 (...theme2...)

l3: BETTER both_hands:CL-C-"change places"-2up|2down) / ------...theme2...

l4: INDEX-1 blending:(TO-PUNCH-KEYBOARD) / ------theme1

l5: blending:(both_hands:CL-C-"places change"-2up|2down) / ------...theme2...

l6: FINE) ------

'I was typing with the computer. When I was reading the text I started to wonder whether the order of the two paragraphs should be changed. I typed in the command and the order changed. Now the text was fine.'

Syntactically, the text in (10) can be analysed into six sentences or clauses, each repre- sented on its own line. The sentence on the first line (l1) is a topic-comment structure in which the sign COMPUTER is the topic and the SV ordered intransitive clause is the comment. The sentence on the second line (l2) is a structurally incomplete AV ordered transitive clause in which the P-argument (cf. 'screen' or 'text') is not expressed lexically. The sentence on the third line (l3) is an interrogative intransitive sentence (i.e. polar question); it represents a type of intransitive structure in which the meaning of the fused classificatory core argument has not been lexically explicated. The sentence on the fourth line (l4) is a minimal structurally full intransitive clause with the order SV. The sentence on the fifth line (l5) is also a minimal intransitive clause, this time, however, expressed by a single Type 3 verbal. The sentence on the sixth line (l6) is here analysed as an idiomatic clause-like expression. Traditional syntactic analysis leaves important formal aspects of the text unac- counted for: the pantomimic and gestural features – i.e. blends (Liddell 2003) – that are an inherent part of many signed utterances. For example, in (10) it is not the clause on line 2, or any other syntactic unit (in the traditional sense) directly linked to it, which expresses the thematic information 'text or paragraphs on the computer screen'; the P- argument that could be supposed to express this meaning is omitted from the clause. Instead, the meaning is constructed mentally on the basis of the text initial topic 'computer' – limiting the typing process to the domain of computers and not, for example, to the domain of typewriters – and the blend in which the signer imagines the computer screen in front of her. Textually, the topic functions as a supertheme whose scope is the 10

whole signed story. This supertheme contributes also the interpretation of the second subtheme; the fused core argument(s) in the Type 3 verbal does not need lexical expli- cation because its referent is retrieved on the basis of the supertheme, and the co- occurring blend. The conclusion from this is that a lot of information in FinSL texts is conveyed, not through traditional syntactic apparatus but through associative relations initiated by topics and blends. Blends are also an important means in indicating and increasing textual cohesion. For example, the final crystallised single-sign clause on the line six does not need any additional lexical or morphosyntactic material to express the information that it is the 'text' or 'paragraphs' that are fine because the continuity of the theme expressed by the clause on line five is made explicit by the continuity of the blend. In other words, it is the blend that ties the themes of the two clauses, and the clauses, together. The example (10) displays two other important ways to increase textual cohesion. The first is the prosody: the grouping of signs into clauses and sentences is indicated both by the uninterruptiveness of prosody and by changes (e.g. pauses) in the prosody. The second way to increase textual cohesion concerns locating the signs: for example, returning of hands to the keyboard means returning them to the same physical location where the verbal TO-TYPE-KEYBOARD was articulated. This establishes and strengthens the textual link between the two different parts of the text. A further means to increase textual cohesion, not used in (10), is to use pointings (cf. double-indexing analysed by Jantunen 2007b). Finally, the example (10) implies about the ways themes are changed in FinSL texts. These include pointings (e.g. INDEX-1), classificatory handshapes (e.g. CL-C), and blends.

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