How Finnish Postpositions See the Axis System

Left/right and front/back in sign, speech, and co-speech gestures: What do data from Turkish Sign Language, Croatian Sign Language, American Sign Language, Turkish, Croatian, and English reveal?

“…For example, in Finnish, the distribution of the relationals meaning 'in front of', 'behind', 'above', and 'below' provided interesting results (Nikanne 2003). There are two kinds of relationals meaning 'in front of' and 'behind' in Finnish.…”

“…They found that it is the case that the Finnish speakers distinguished 'behind' terms when the objects are in motion. Yet, according to Nikanne (2003) 'above' and 'below' refer only to vertical relations as in canonical English.…”

Inhibition within a reference frame during the interpretation of spatial language

“…According to Garnham (1989) and Fillmore (1971), in English, the most basic assignment is front and back; in addition, front and back have a preferred status in Finnish (Nikanne, 2003).…”

Temporal frames of reference and the locative case marking of the Finnish adposition ete- ‘in front of / ahead’

“…In Finnish, relationships of motion are indicated by the external case forms (as opposed to the internal case forms given in Table 2) of the 'front' adposition ete-. As pointed out by Keresztes (1964) and Nikanne (2003), the adessive form ede-llä indicates the meaning 'ahead' / 'in front of', if both Figure and Ground are moving in the same direction; see (5) and (6).…”