Search results for "Finnish sign language"
showing 10 items of 16 documents
Figure–Ground Spatial Relationships in Finnish Sign Language Discourse
2020
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…
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Using Finnish Sign Language : Training Counselors in Signed ACT for the Deaf. A Pilot Study
2018
This study evaluated the implementation of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Finnish Sign Language in a rehabilitation center for deaf people. Sixteen (16) clients and nine (9) staff members participated in this pilot study. Staff members received a brief training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) including 16 h lectures, 15 h supervision, and studying material. Each staff member treated 1–2 clients during 8–10 sessions. As part of the study, several ACT metaphors and exercises were translated into Finnish Sign Language. The study indicated that counselors with limited knowledge of psychological interventions were able to deliver an ACT intervention using Finnish Sign Language a…
Constructed Action, the Clause and the Nature of Syntax in Finnish Sign Language
2017
AbstractThis paper investigates the interplay of constructed action and the clause in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). Constructed action is a form of gestural enactment in which the signers use their hands, face and other parts of the body to represent the actions, thoughts or feelings of someone they are referring to in the discourse. With the help of frequencies calculated from corpus data, this article shows firstly that when FinSL signers are narrating a story, there are differences in how they use constructed action. Then the paper argues that there are differences also in the prototypical structure, linkage type and non-manual activity of clauses, depending on the presence or non-prese…
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 Lan…
2020
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…
Many languages, many modalities : Finnish Sign Language signers as learners of English
2015
For a multilingual person, language learning is a process which requires and makes use of many varied characteristics that have developed in multilingual environments. This study deals with the learner beliefs of Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) signers who study at the university. The data for this study consist of student interviews and essays collected in connection with an English course at the Language Centre. In this article, we focus on discussing how the linguistic background and learner beliefs of FinSL signers form a basis for exploring features that affect their learning of English. Based on the socio-cultural framework, the learner beliefs these students have formed have been exami…
EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE IN SPOKEN AND SIGNED STORIES TOLD BY A DEAF CHILD WITH A COCHLEAR IMPLANT: WORDS, SIGNS OR PARALINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS?
2011
In this paper the use and quality of the evaluative language produced by a bilingual child in a story-telling situation is analysed. The subject, an 11-year-old Finnish boy, Jimmy, is bilingual in Finnish sign language (FinSL) and spoken Finnish. He was born deaf but got a cochlear implant at the age of five. The data consist of a spoken and a signed version of “The Frog Story”. The analysis shows that evaluative devices and expressions differ in the spoken and signed stories told by the child. In his Finnish story he uses mostly lexical devices – comments on a character and the character’s actions as well as quoted speech occasionally combined with prosodic features. In his FinSL story he…
Agent defocusing in two-participant clauses in Finnish Sign Language
2019
This article investigates what strategies are used for defocusing the agent in two-participant clauses in FinSL. The question is approached by analyzing a set of data that consists of videotaped informational texts. Several strategies for agent defocusing were found. First, the agent can simply be omitted. Second, the agent can be expressed with a pronominal pointing sign used non-referentially. Pronominal pointing signs that can be used non-referentially include at least the non-first person plural pronominal pointing sign and the first person singular pointing sign, possibly also the first person plural pointing sign. This study also suggests that constructed action is an additional, opti…
Clausal coordination in Finnish Sign Language
2016
This paper deals with the coordination of clauses in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). Building on conversational data, the paper first shows that linking in conjunctive coordination in FinSL is primarily asyndetic, whereas in adversative and disjunctive coordination FinSL prefers syndetic linking. Secondly, the paper investigates the nonmanual prosody of coordination: nonmanual activity is shown both to mark the juncture of the coordinand clauses and to draw their contours. Finally, the paper addresses certain forms of clausal coordination in FinSL that are sign language-specific. It is suggested that the sign language-specific properties of coordination are caused both by the fact that signe…
The alignment of head nods with syntactic units in Finnish Sign Language and Swedish Sign Language
2016
In this paper we examine the relationship between specific head movement events – head nods, often treated as prosodic boundary markers – and syntactic units in Finnish (FinSL) and Swedish Sign Language (SSL). In the study we investigated the alignment of head nods with syntactic units on the basis of a total of 20 (10+10) FinSL and SSL narratives. The results of the study show that in both languages head nods appeared similarly on syntactic boundaries and that the tendency was to align nods sentence-finally. However, not all head nods behaved this way: for example, a relatively large number of head nods were also found to occur sentence-initially or elsewhere in the sentence. Furthermore, …
On the rhythm of head movements in Finnish and Swedish Sign Language sentences
2016
This paper investigates, with the help of computer-vision technology, the similarities and differences in the rhythm of the movements of the head in sentences in Finnish (FinSL) and Swedish Sign Language (SSL). The results show that the movement of the head in the two languages is often very similar: in both languages, the instances when the movement of the head changes direction were distributed similarly with regard to clause-boundaries, and the contours of the roll (tilting-like) motion of the head during the sentences were similar. Concerning differences, direction changes were found to be used more effectively in the marking of clause-boundaries in FinSL, and in SSL the head moved near…