The more you move, the more action you construct : a motion capture study on head and upper-torso movements in constructed action in Finnish Sign Language narratives

Abstract This paper investigates, with the help of motion capture data processed on corpus principles, the characteristics of head and upper-torso movements in constructed action and regular narration (i.e., signing without constructed action) in FinSL. Specifically, the paper evaluates the validity of two arguments concerning constructed action: that constructed action forms a continuum with regular narration, and that constructed action divides into three subtypes (i.e., overt, reduced, and subtle). The results presented in the paper support the first argument but not directly the second one. Because of the ambiguous position of reduced constructed action in between subtle and overt const…

Raising the Profile of Sign Language Teachers in Finland

Sign language teaching in Finland has a long history. In contrast, sign language teacher training programs and research into the sign languages of Finland both know a short history. Due to this contrast, the field of sign language teaching nowadays can be seen as the ‘Wild West’. Till today, teachers from different backgrounds do teach sign language. We do not have a clear picture of what knowledge or competencies are expected from these teachers. In this article we would like to share our opinions about what the profile of a sign language teacher could look like in order to raise and advance the discussion and improve the quality of sign language teaching in Finland. nonPeerReviewed

Expressing existence in Flemish Sign Language

Existential sentences in Flemish Sign Language and Finnish Sign Language

This paper presents a descriptive and comparative study of existential sentences in Flemish Sign Language and Finnish Sign Language. Existential sentences are used to express the existence or presence of something or someone. This study investigates how expressions of existence or presence are constructed and what the order of Figure and Ground is in existential sentences in both languages. Existential sentences can be formed around the lexical signs HEEFT (‘have’) in Flemish Sign Language and OLLA (‘have’) in Finnish Sign Language or the lexical signs can be omitted from the construction. The number of existential sentences with an overt HEEFT/OLLA is higher in Finnish Sign Language than F…

Figure–Ground Spatial Relationships in Finnish Sign Language Discourse

AbstractThis study is about expressing spatial relationships between Figure and Ground in Finnish Sign Language discourse and shows that the variation in this expression is primarily discourse dependent. The main findings are, first, that Ground mainly precedes Figure whether the Figure is new or a known referent within the discourse; the reverse order is possible only when the Figure is known. Second, the lexical signolla(‘have’) appears more frequently in expressing spatial relationships with a new Figure and less frequently with a known Figure but never in a construction with Figure preceding Ground; the formoli(‘had’), referring to the past, appears only in Figure preceding Ground const…

Little Leon signing and speaking

Leon is the son of a Belgian deaf father and a Finnish hearing mother. He lives in Finland and is growing up multilingual including both spoken and signed languages. In this article we describe Leon’s multilingualism. nonPeerReviewed

Mutual intelligibility among the sign languages of Belgium and the Netherlands

AbstractIn an exploratory study of mutual intelligibility between the sign languages of the northern part of Belgium (Flemish Sign Language, VGT), the southern part of Belgium (French Belgian Sign Language, LSFB), and the Netherlands (Sign Language of the Netherlands, NGT), we tested the comprehension of VGT by signers of LSFB and NGT. In order to measure the influence of iconic structures (classifier constructions and constructed action) that linguistic analyses have shown to be similar across different sign languages, two genres were compared: narrative and informative signing. To investigate the effect of the overlap between the spoken languages surrounding the Dutch and Flemish Deaf com…