Ellipsis in Finnish Sign Language

Abstract

This paper deals with syntactic ellipsis in clauses in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). The point of departure for the paper is the observation, confirmed by several studies, that clauses in FinSL are often syntactically incomplete. Building on this, the paper first describes how all core-internal clausal material may be elided in FinSL: core arguments in clauses with a verbal nucleus, core-internal NPs in clauses with a nominal nucleus, and even nuclei themselves. The paper then discusses several grammatical contexts which especially favor ellipsis in FinSL. These are question–answer pairs, two-clause coordinated structures, topic–comment structures, blend structures, and structures containing gesturally indicating Type 2 verbals. Finally, the paper argues that FinSL conforms to the main characteristics of a discourse-oriented language, and that FinSL clauses are not highly governed units syntactically.

Clausal coordination in Finnish Sign Language

“…The differences lie mainly in the meaningful use of signing space, blending, and frequent ellipsis. According to Jantunen (2013), FinSL tends to elide especially the thematic nominal elements, and this is the case also in (3). The frequent omission of thematic elements has been used as evidence for the interpretation that FinSL is inherently a discourseoriented language (Jantunen 2013).…”

“…According to Jantunen (2013), FinSL tends to elide especially the thematic nominal elements, and this is the case also in (3). The frequent omission of thematic elements has been used as evidence for the interpretation that FinSL is inherently a discourseoriented language (Jantunen 2013). In such languages, ellipsis ultimately serves to add discourse coherence (McShane 2005).…”

“…In general, FinSL verbals are analyzed as belonging to one of three main subcategories: Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 verbals (Jantunen 2008(Jantunen , 2010(Jantunen , 2013; see also Rissanen 1998, andLiddell 2003). Type 1 verbals consist of only a morphological component and are formationally the most fixed type of FinSL verbals.…”

“…First, Type 3 verbals are considered to be full, well formed clauses on their own (Jantunen 2008(Jantunen , 2013 (Jantunen 2007(Jantunen , 2013. In other words, FinSL does not have a copula between the (first) non-predicating and the (second) predicating NP.…”

“…Complex sentences of any kind have not been previously investigated in FinSL, in which prior syntactic work has been done on simple equative sentences (Jantunen 2007), transitive clauses (Jantunen 2008), topic-comment structures (Jantunen 2009), and clause-internal ellipsis (Jantunen 2013). However, internationally, issues relating to complex sentences in sign languages have been addressed at least since Liddell (1980), and the most recent overviews on the subject are Tang and Lau (2012) and Velupillai (2012: 339-342).…”