3.1 Clauses with a verbal nucleus

So far, the focus of syntactic research into FinSL has been on finding out the order of the core elements in declarative transitive clauses (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008; see also Ala-Sippola Reference Ala-Sippola2012). The main finding of the work has been that these clauses are not always ordered in exactly the same way, but can display at least three structural combinations of the verbal nucleus (V) and its two core arguments, the A argument (the argument referring to the more active, typically agentive participant in a transitive situation) and the P argument (the more passive, typically patient-like argument). These orders are AVP, APV, and PAV. The type of clause has been found to affect sign order in that isolated clauses only occur with the orders AVP and APV, whereas clauses extracted from longer stretches of discourse may also manifest the order PAV. However, even in discourse settings, the order PAV seems to be highly marked (see Ala-Sippola Reference Ala-Sippola2012). The orders AVP, APV, and PAV are demonstrated in (2a), (2b) and (2c), respectively (data from Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008) (for coding and transcription conventions, see Appendix).

1. (2)

   1. a. _A[WOMAN] _V[TO-VIDEOTAPE] _P[MAN]

   2. ‘A woman videotapes a man.’

   3. b. _A[GIRL] _P[TV] _V[LOOK-AT]

   4. ‘A girl watches television.’

   5. c. _P[BOOK] _A[ME] _V[SEARCH] / FIND / SIGH-OF-RELIEF / . . .

   6. ‘I was looking for a book, and fortunately I found it. . . .’

Sign order in FinSL transitive clauses has been shown (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008) to exhibit regular patterns similar to those found in other sign languages (see Liddell Reference Liddell1980 for American Sign Language, Engberg-Pedersen Reference Engberg-Pedersen and Pajunen2002 for Danish Sign Language, Johnston & Schembri Reference Johnston and Schembri2007 for Australian Sign Language). For example, an A argument is always expressed before V, and there is also a strong tendency to express an A argument before a P argument. Moreover, verbal-initial structures are not used, and the gesturally depictive Type 3 verbals (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008, Reference Jantunen and Jantunen2010) including a classifier morpheme (e.g., CL-G-‘move towards’-2-1 ‘a person walks towards’) are placed at the end of the utterance (see example (11) below); this applies to all structures containing Type 3 verbals. Otherwise, the type of verbal – that is, whether the verbal belongs to the plain Type 1 (e.g., THINK) or to a gesturally indicating Type 2 (e.g., GIVE) – does not affect the sign order (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008, Reference Jantunen and Jantunen2010; Ala-Sippola Reference Ala-Sippola2012), as has been claimed for other sign languages (e.g., Kegl Reference Kegl2004 for American Sign Language). As the typology of FinSL verbals is relevant to the discussion of ellipsis, the main characteristics of the three verbal types are summarized in Table 1, taken from Jantunen (Reference Jantunen2008).Footnote ²

Table 1.

FinSL verbal types (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008).

Intransitive clauses in FinSL all follow the scheme SV (where S refers to the single, typically agentive participant in the situation encoded by an intransitive verbal). Examples of isolated FinSL intransitive clauses are given in (3) (data from Takkinen, Jantunen & Ahonen Reference Takkinen, Jantunen and Ahonen2010).

1. (3)

   1. a. _S[BABY] _V[SLEEP]

   2. ‘A baby sleeps.’

   3. b. _S[COUPLE] _V[DIVORCE]

   4. ‘The couple divorced.’

The fact that FinSL places the main argument in front of the verbal in both transitive and intransitive clauses suggests that FinSL is a more nominative–accusative type of system than absolutive–ergative, as has sometimes been suggested (Itkonen Reference Itkonen2001). This interpretation is also supported by the observation that if core arguments are to have any markers, they attach only to P and not to A or S. An example of a context where this may happen is when P has the semantic role of a recipient; in such cases the P argument may be affixed, for example, with a palm-up pointing that is directed towards the physical or abstract location of the entity with the role of the recipient (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008). In general, however, concanative morphology seems not to be used significantly to mark participant roles in FinSL (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008, Ala-Sippola Reference Ala-Sippola2012).

3.2 Clauses with a nominal nucleus

Clauses with an identifying nominal predicate – that is, equative clauses (e.g., The capital of Finland is Helsinki) – have also been investigated in FinSL (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2007, Reference Jantunen2009). This work has shown that FinSL uses no copula between the non-predicating and predicating NPs. However, this finding may be slightly distorted because many equative expressions can occur with a near copula-like element, the so-called PI sign, in front of the predicating NP. This sign is probably in the process of grammaticalization into a copula, but at the moment it is used signer dependently as a modal device expressing certainty. Equative clauses with and without PI are demonstrated in (4) (data from Jantunen Reference Jantunen2007).

1. (4)

   1. a. _NP-non-pred[HIS SURNAME] _NP-pred[LAKE-n-e-n]Footnote ³

   2. ‘His family name is Järvinen.’

   3. b. _NP-non-pred[FRANCE OWN CAPITAL] PI _NP-pred[PARIS]

   4. ‘The capital of France is Paris.’

Two juxtaposed NPs also form the basic structure of other nominal clause types in FinSL (see Rissanen Reference Rissanen1998). These include characterizing and locative clauses, demonstrated in (5a) and (5b), respectively. The characterizing clause in (5a) may be produced with an optional PI, which further suggests that the sign may be in the process of grammaticalizing into a copula.

1. (5)

   1. a. _NP-non-pred[GIRL] _NP-pred[CLEVER]

   2. ‘The girl is clever.’

   3. b. _NP-non-pred[OWN WORK-PLACE] _NP-pred[HERE]

   4. ‘My workplace is here.’

In (5a), the property-assigning sign CLEVER is treated as a nominal, not as an adjective. Adjective is not an independent word class in FinSL. All signs denoting properties are analyzed semantically and grammatically either as marginal nominals or marginal verbals, the two forming the two major word classes in FinSL (Jantunen Reference Jantunen and Jantunen2010). For example, signs for color (e.g., RED, GREEN) are classified as nominals: they refer to abstract ‘color entities’, they cannot display event structure or information related to aspect in their form (a major characteristic of verbals), 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 analyzed as verbals: they express states (i.e. they are stative verbals), they can encode information related to the structure of the event in their form (e.g., ‘be happy for a long time’), and, like other verbals, they cannot be the first constituents in structurally minimal declarative transitive clauses.

Further support for the non-existence of the word class adjective as a grammatical category in FinSL is provided, for example, by the identical morphosyntactic marking of both ‘genitive attributes’, as in (6a), and ‘adjective attributes’, as in (6b), and predicating core verbals, in (7a), and predicating property signs, in (7b) (data from Takkinen et al. Reference Takkinen, Jantunen and Ahonen2010):

1. (6)

   1. a. [BOY APPLE]

   2. ‘boy's apple’

   3. b. [RED APPLE]

   4. ‘red apple’

2. (7)

   1. a. GIRL CRY

   2. ‘Girl cries.’

   3. b. GIRL HAPPY

   4. ‘Girl is happy.’

In the analysis of nominal clauses (such as the equative clauses in (4) or the characterizing clause in (5a)), the question of the syntactic status of the first non-predicating NP has always been problematic (Kelomäki Reference Kelomäki1998). The problem arises from the fact that this NP cannot be properly counted either as a core argument (because there is no verbal whose semantics would require its presence) or as a peripheral element (because the NP does not straightforwardly set the context). In FinSL research, the issue has been solved by treating the non-predicating NP simply as a nominal-structure–specific core-internal element (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2007).

The main evidence for this core-internal treatment comes from the distribution of question words: because question words occur either in pre- or post-core positions, and because, for example, in (4a) the question word WHY would come before the first non-predicating NP, the NP must be counted as core-internal. Such an analysis is given in (8).

1. (8) content question operator

2. [WHY _CORE[HIS SURNAME LAKE-n-e-n]]

3. ‘Why his family name is Järvinen?’

In (8), the clause is layered with a non-manual interrogative operator for content questions. The primary features of this question operator are furrowed eyebrows and a forward head tilt. There are specific non-manual operators also for polar questions and for negation. In the main polar question marker, the eyebrows are raised and the head tilts forward. The primary negative operator is a headshake (see Rissanen Reference Rissanen1985, Jantunen Reference Jantunen2003, Savolainen Reference Savolainen and Zeshan2006).

3.3 The topic–comment structure

Clauses in FinSL may be preceded by a left-detached topic NP that sets an interpretative (e.g., spatial, temporal, or individual) framework for the following main predication (comment), expressed by the clause (see Figure 1). It has been argued that 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 with a pointing) (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2009). Overall, it has been claimed that FinSL topic structures resemble those found in topic-prominent languages, for example, in Mandarin Chinese (Chafe Reference Chafe and Li1976). Examples of topic structures with spatial and temporal topics are given in (9a) and (9b), respectively (data from Jantunen Reference Jantunen2009).

1. (9)

   1. a. non-manual topic marker

   2. _TOP[NIGHT CLUB INDEX-3] / ME WORK DOORMAN

   3. ‘As for that night club (there), I work as a doorman.’

   4. b. non-manual topic marker

   5. _TOP[NOW           EVENING] / ME GO-TO PUB

   6. ‘As for this evening, I will go to the pub.’

If spatial or temporal information is not expressed as a topic, it can be expressed within the clause as a periphery. It seems that especially in discourse settings (and depending, for example, on the clause type) the position of peripheral elements within the clause can vary. However, perhaps in order to maximize the difference between topic–comment structures and plain clauses, there is a tendency to express the peripheral information at the end of the clause, as in (10).

1. (10) MY SON BORN _PERIPHERY[TWO-THOUSAND FIVE]

2. ‘My son (was) born in two thousand and five.’

In FinSL, utterances containing descriptive Type 3 verbals (see Table 1) are typically topic–comment structures. Syntactically, these verbals occur in sentence-final position and can be considered to be full, well formed clauses (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008). The analysis stems partly from the fact that the verbals include fused classifier handshape(s) that can be analyzed as nominal core arguments of the predicate (Van Valin & LaPolla Reference Van Valin and LaPolla1997, Dixon & Aikhenvald Reference Dixon, Dixon and Aikhenvald2000, Van Valin Reference Van Valin2005). Another reason for the clausal interpretation is the fact that the meaning of these verbals is typically very clause-like, that is, it covers the whole event. However, due to the semantics of classifiers, there tends to be some vagueness in the meaning of such verbals/clauses. This can be overcome by the use of contextual information or by linguistic specification. The specification means adding a full NP in front of the verbal/clause as a topic, as in (11). Because descriptive Type 3 verbals may need the specification of, for example, location (i.e., ground), or may include two different classifiers (e.g., ground+figure) (i.e., they can contain representational activity in both hands), FinSL is considered to be able to have chains of at least two consecutive topics.

1. (11) non-manual topic marker

2. _TOP1[HOUSE-2]  /  _TOP2[CAR]  /  CL-B-‘come to a stop’-4-2

3. ‘Car (literally: rectangular object) stops near the house.’

Topics have an important distributional restriction as far as non-manual activity is concerned: they cannot be layered with negative or interrogative operators. This restriction stems partly from the general function of topics: there is no point in denying the framework required in the interpretation of the comment, nor in using a question as such a framework (see Kroeger Reference Kroeger2004). The restriction can also be motivated by the fact that there is already a non-manual (topic) marker present in topics.

3.4 Other complex structures

Adding a topic before the clause makes the structure as a whole more complex. Another way to create complex structures is to bind together two (or more) clauses. Structurally, the resulting complex sentence can be analyzed as being constructed either through coordination or through subordination. The exact mechanisms involved in these processes have not yet been fully researched in FinSL but, as evidenced by the examples in (12), complex sentences created with both strategies definitely exist.

1. (12)

   1. a. BOY GO-TO SCHOOL ˈ BUT GIRL STAY-AT-HOME

   2. ‘The boy went to school but the girl stayed at home.’

   3. b. ME THINK ˈ GIRL SMART

   4. ‘I think that the girl is smart.’

The sentence in (12a) is an example of a two-clause coordinated structure. In the structure, both clauses are of equal status, which is evidenced by the fact that the positions of the clauses can be changed without any change in the overall meaning (Johnston & Schembri Reference Johnston and Schembri2007). In the example, the clauses are conjoined with the sign BUT, which belongs to the minor word class of conjunction signs in FinSL. If the sign BUT is left out of the sentence, the meaning of the sentence changes to ‘The boy went to school and the girl stayed at home’. This suggests that the basic coordination strategy in FinSL is simply juxtaposing two clauses.

In (12b), the two clauses do not have equal syntactic status. Instead, the first clause is the main clause and the second clause is the subordinate clausal complement (core argument) of the verbal THINK, the nucleus of the main clause. The verbal THINK itself is ambitransitive in FinSL, that is, it can be used either intransitively or transitively (Dixon & Aikhenvald Reference Dixon, Dixon and Aikhenvald2000). In the present context, it is being used transitively.

Yet another way to create syntactically – and semantically – complex sentences in FinSL is to use blends. As a term, blending was introduced to mainstream sign language linguistics by Liddell (Reference Liddell2003), who used it in his cognitively oriented framework to capture certain very common referential and pantomime-like phenomena in signing. An example of the first type – of the complex referential use of space – is given in (13). In the example, the signer exploits the topic–comment structure and creates a blend – a ‘conceptual mixture’ – of (primarily) a referential token space (the referential locations for ‘cat‘ and ‘dog‘) and the real space (the physical reality where the signer exists and signs) to represent the semantic event ‘the dog attacks the cat‘.

1. (13) DOG INDEX-3_token-a / CAT INDEX-4_token-b / DOG ATTACK-3-4 CAT

2. (After establishing the tokens:) ‘The dog attacks the cat.’

An example of a more pantomime-like blend is given in (14), from Lukasczyk (Reference Lukasczyk2008). This is an example of the so-called surrogate blend, which means that the signer himself comes to represent the entity (mouse) about which he first starts to sign. The blend in this case is manifested through an extensive use of non-manual articulators (eyes, head, body) mimicking the in situ habitus of the mouse.

1. (14) In a story in which the Fox has just asked the question ‘Who lives there?’:

2. surrogate

3. . . . / INDEX-3_token MOUSE GNAWLER SAY / ME-3

4. ‘The mouse Gnawler answered: “Me”.’

In the blend part of (14), the manual activity (the production of the sign ME in the tokenized location of the mouse) represents the words of the mouse, not those of the signer/protagonist. In fact, in FinSL, surrogate blends are a natural way to report direct speech, that is, the words and thoughts and actions of others (Lukasczyk Reference Lukasczyk2008). In general, as surrogate blends combine syntactic structure with pantomime-like activity, they also demonstrate the fuzziness of the border between language and gesture in sign languages (for more, see Liddell Reference Liddell2003).

4.1 Ellipsis of core arguments

In clauses with a verbal nucleus, a very common form of ellipsis is the elision of the S/A argument (Wulf et al. Reference Wulf, Dudis, Bailey and Lucas2002, Ala-Sippola Reference Ala-Sippola2012). Several examples of clauses with a missing S/A are given in (15). The examples demonstrate how the elided S/A element can be either a pronoun, as in (15a, b), or a full NP, as in (15c, d). Moreover, the examples show how the missing element may be accessible either pragmatically, (15a–c), or syntactically, (15d). (From now on, clauses in focus are bracketed and their cores are indicated with boldface; the elided element is indicated with the symbol Ø.)

1. (15)

   1. a. YES YES ‘PRECISELY’ [Ø REMEMBER (Ø)]

   2. ‘Yes, yes, that's how it was! (I) remember.’

   3. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 2, participant Jr, clause 11)

   4. b. The signer has talked about the birth of her son in 1999:

   5. . . . / [TWO-THOUSAND. . . ONE Ø MOVE HELSINKI+DIRECTION]

   6. ‘In two thousand and. . . one (we) moved to Helsinki.’

   7. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 2, participant Jr, clause 20)

   8. c. The signer has just mentioned that Swedish is constantly used in Vaasa, a city in Western Finland:

   9. . . . / [Ø SPEAK SWEDISH ALMOST EVERY DAY]

   10. ‘(People) speak Swedish almost every day.’

   11. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 1, participant Sr, clause 18)

   12. d. MAN GO-IN / [Ø SEE WOMAN]

   13. ‘The man goes in and (the man) sees the woman.’

The missing elements in (15a–c) have no syntactic antecedents. In (15a), the referent of the elided first person pronoun is understood from the fact that it is the signer herself who produces the whole short utterance in response to the other signer's assertion. In (15b), the referent of the missing first person plural pronoun is recovered from the fact that the signer has just talked, among other things, about the birth of her child a few years earlier; the addressee also knows the signer and her family's history personally, so overtly mentioning ‘we’ would be entirely redundant. In (15c), the generic human referent of the elided NP is retrieved only on the basis of world knowledge, that is, basically from the commonly known fact that it is people in general who speak languages.Footnote ⁴

In (15d), the second clause of the coordinated structure lacks an overtly expressed A argument. However, unlike in (15a–c), the referent of the missing element has an antecedent in the preceding syntactic context: it is co-referential with the S of the first clause, that is, the elided A represents zero anaphora. Superficially, (15d) seems to suggest that the referent of the missing A (‘man’) is recovered on the basis of a pivot constraint (similar to that which governs the occurrence of ellipsis in corresponding English sentences) and that FinSL has an S/A pivot (Dixon Reference Dixon1994). However, this analysis is contradicted by the fact that it is possible in FinSL to elide also P arguments in contexts that meet the criteria of an S/P pivot. An example of this is given below in (16).

1. (16) MAN GO-IN / [WOMAN LOOK-AT Ø]

2. ‘The man goes in and the woman looks at (the man/him).’

In (16), the elided P of the second clause is also co-referential with the S (‘man’) of the first clause. Consequently, because languages follow either the S/A or S/P paradigm (Dixon Reference Dixon1994), the identity of the referents of the missing elements in (15d) and (16) cannot be recovered on the basis of any pivot constraint. Instead, it is suggested that the referential identity of the missing elements is in both cases retrieved on the basis of the discourse theme ‘man’. This is a widely used strategy also cross-linguistically (Dixon Reference Dixon1994). More generally, examples (15d) and (16) suggest that FinSL has no syntactic pivot. Engberg-Pedersen (Reference Engberg-Pedersen and Pajunen2002) has put forward a similar claim for Danish Sign Language.

If the context is right, it is possible to elide both core arguments of transitive structures at the same time. This can be argued to be the case in (15a), which, in addition to the main argument, lacks also the (optional) second argument. Omissions of both arguments are known to happen relatively frequently also with indicating Type 2 verbals, to be discussed in terms of ellipsis in Section 5.

4.2 Ellipsis of nuclei

In addition to core arguments, verbal nuclei too may be elided in FinSL. Two examples demonstrating this are given in (17).

1. (17)

   1. a. The signer is answering the question what languages she uses daily:

   2. [ME Ø SIGN-LANGUAGE] / . . .

   3. ‘I (use) sign language.’

   4. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 1, participant Sr, clause 9)

   5. b. GIRL HAS-GOT TWO-PIECES / [BOY Ø ONE-PIECE]

   6. ‘The girl has two and the boy (has) one.’

In (17a), the overt structure of the elliptical transitive clause is similar to the NP plus NP structure found in nominal clauses (see Section 3). However, as the meaning of the clause obviously cannot be ‘I am (in) sign language’, the clause is interpreted as being elliptical in terms of its verbal nucleus, the sign USE. The meaning of the missing verbal in this case is inferred, again, on the basis of the preceding context: the clause is (part of) an answer to the other signer's question as to how many languages the signer uses in her everyday life. In this stretch of conversation the verbal USE occurs only in this discourse-initial question and is consistently omitted in the rest of the discussion.

The example in (17b) presents another type of verbal ellipsis which is referred to in the literature as gapping. In gapping, the verbal in the second clause of a coordinated (or comparative) structure is unexpressed (McShane Reference McShane2005) and its meaning is deduced on the basis of the parallelism between the two clauses. Evidently, this parallelism is quite strong and reliable in (17b): if the verbal nucleus of the first clause were omitted, the interpretation of the meaning of the resulting clause would be ‘Two (pieces of) girls’. However, in the actual elliptical clause in (17b), there is no danger of such ambiguity.

4.3 Ellipsis of non-predicating NPs in nominal clauses

Leaving out core-internal elements is also possible in nominal clauses in FinSL, as demonstrated in (18). However, as nominal clauses are not governed by the semantic requirements of the predicate in the same way as clauses with a verbal nucleus are, it may not always be possible to determine between true cases of ellipsis and, for example, idiomatic uses of impersonal nominal predicates and other fragments (McShane Reference McShane2005).

1. (18)

   1. a. The signer has just mentioned that she uses sign language daily:

   2. . . . EVIDENT / [Ø OBVIOUS] / ME WORK HERE

   3. . . . ‘(That's/My use of sign language is) obvious. I work here.’

   4. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 1, participant Sr, clause 10)

   5. b. (surrogate)

   6. MAN COME-IN / [Ø TALL]

   7. ‘The man comes in. (He) is tall.’

In (18a), the clause in focus is considered to be elliptical in either the core-internal full thematic NP or an anaphoric pronoun referring to the previously discussed ‘signer's use of sign language’. The analysis rests on the fact that, although FinSL does not use the pleonastic ‘It is . . .’ structure typical of English, it is possible to add an NP or simply an anaphoric pronoun into the structure. The clause in (18b) is elliptical on the same grounds. However, unlike in (18a), the clause in (18b) makes it almost obligatory for the signer to use a surrogate blend in which he/she takes the role of a perceiver who ‘eye-balls’ the entering man and his height. In the blend, the signer turns his/her head and eyes upwards at the same time as he/she articulates the sign TALL. In the sign, the dominant hand moves vertically upwards with an open palm handshape and a slowly extending wrist.

Apart from (18b), none of the examples discussed above have included any marked form of non-manual activity that could affect the elliptical reading of the examples. In other words, no example has involved, for example, the substitution of a manually expressed pronominal core argument with a non-manually expressed one. This is a known process in FinSL and does not represent true ellipsis, because the pronoun is present, albeit non-manually. For example, in (19), the S argument of the nucleus COME-HERE is expressed non-manually with a head nod towards the addressee in between the last two signs of the clause and is, thus, not elided.

1. (19) content question operator

2. nod towards the addressee

3. HOW-MANY YEAR BEFORE COME-HERE

4. ‘How many years ago did you come here?’

5. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 2, participant Jr, clause 2)

In conclusion, this section has shown that it is possible to elide all core-internal clausal material in FinSL: core arguments (S/A and P), core-internal NPs, and nuclei. In the next section, we will outline several grammatical contexts that specifically seem to favor the ellipsis of these elements.

5.1 Question–answer pairs

One grammatical context in which frequent use of elliptical clauses has been identified in FinSL is that of questions and answers: questions permit reduced answers because all the necessary information is typically contained already in the question part (McShane Reference McShane2005). An often cited example in the literature is the signed question Are you deaf?, which may be answered only with a head nod (e.g., Rissanen Reference Rissanen1985, Jantunen & Takkinen Reference Jantunen and Takkinen2011). Another example, extracted from an actual dialogue, is given in (20) (see also 17a). In (20), the reduced answer contains neither A nor P (the second of which may be analyzed to be a full subordinate clausal complement) because their meaning can be directly inferred from the preceding question.

1. (20) Question:

2. _______________________________________________________

3. AT-ALL YOU THINK / HOW MANY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

4. question operator

5. DURING-ONE-DAY YOU USE

6. ‘Have you ever thought how many different languages you use during one day?’

7. Answer:

8. YES / [Ø OFTEN THINK [Ø]]

9. ‘Yes, (I have) often thought (about it/how many languages I use daily).’

10. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 1, clauses 1–3)

Cross-linguistically, question–answer context is not always considered to be a proper domain from which ellipsis should be identified as it may be governed by a specific set of interactional and grammatical rules (McShane Reference McShane2005). However, it is claimed here that the case is different with FinSL: the question–answer set-up in FinSL is not limited to traditional interrogative dialogue situations but it is used also for other purposes, for example, in monologues to establish discourse focus.

5.2 Two-clause coordinated structures

Another grammatical context clearly favoring ellipsis in FinSL (and in other languages; McShane Reference McShane2005) is the two-clause coordinated structure. In these structures, it is normally the second clause from which some material is elided. The two clauses do not need to have similar structures (see (15d) and (16)) but if they do, like the clauses in the first sentence of (21), the structural parallelism between the two clauses provides an extra cue (in addition to the cue provided by the discourse theme) to recover the referential identity of the elided core arguments (McShane Reference McShane2005).

1. (21) The signer is talking about his journey abroad:

2. SUCH-AND-SUCH / ME FLY-THERE ’ [Ø STAY-THERE] / Ø MEET THERE / DALLAS d-a-l-l-a(-s) AIRPORT THERE / Ø MEET. . .

3. ‘So, I flew there and stayed there. (I) met there, there at Dallas airport. . . (I) met there (the person responsible for international affairs.)’

4. (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008)

The clause in focus in (21) contains a typical example of a zero anaphora in a coordinated structure. The omitted element is the discourse theme (‘me’) with a syntactic S function and it is inferred from the parallel thematic S in the antecedent clause. This particular example is a part of a longer stretch of signing and, as illustrated in (21), the discourse theme is omitted also in subsequent clauses. Overall, there are three consecutive clauses in (21) that occur without the S/A argument.

The examples in (22a) and (22b) illustrate yet other types of ellipses typical of coordinated structures and FinSL, namely the elision of verbal nuclei (and related elements) in the second clause. Sentence (22a) is an example of gapping, similar to that discussed in (17b). Sentence (22b), on the other hand, is an example of either stripping or VP ellipsis. In stripping, the elliptical process strips away all but one main constituent in the ellipsis clause under identity with the antecedent clause (some less important constituents may remain intact as well), whereas in VP ellipsis the verbal phrase (the verbal, its possible P argument, and periphery) are elided (McShane Reference McShane2005). The analytical difficulty in (22b) concerns the syntactic status of the sign ALSO: Is it a less important constituent left intact (stripping) or an element outside the scope of the VP (VP ellipsis)? The fact that VP ellipsis is typically co-licensed with a lexical item (e.g., auxiliaries in English, see McShane Reference McShane2005) suggests the VP ellipsis reading: in (22b), the ellipsis is not possible if the sign ALSO is not present.

1. (22)

   1. a. Boy and girl go to the shop together:

   2. BOY BUY APPLE ’ [GIRL Ø ORANGE]

   3. ‘The boy bought an apple and the girl (bought) an orange.’

   4. b. Boy and girl go to the shop together:

   5. BOY BUY APPLE ’ GIRL Ø ALSO

   6. ‘The boy bought an apple and the girl (bought an apple) too.’

Verbal related elision phenomena in coordinated structures typically rely heavily on the structural parallelism between the two conjoined clauses (see (17b) and (22)). However, as demonstrated by (23), this does not always have to be the case. In (23), the verbal related ellipsis known as sluicing is not primarily licensed by the structural parallelism but by a wh-word; the elision process itself deletes the relevant interrogative phrase (McShane Reference McShane2005).

1. (23) content question operator

2. ME ALREADY-KNOW YOU BUY+ALREADY APPLE ’ BUT WHY [Ø]

3. ‘I know that you bought an apple but (I don't know) why (you bought it).’

5.3 The topic–comment structure

In addition to two-clause coordinated structures, another syntactic configuration clearly favoring ellipsis in FinSL is the topic–comment structure. In the topic–comment structure, it is the comment clause that is often incomplete. In the retrieval of the referents of the elided elements, both textual and contextual knowledge are used extensively. For example, in (24), it is obvious from the discourse context that it is the signer herself who signs at home and at the university campus because she has just been talking about her own daily use of languages. A deeper underlying factor that probably further enables the inference of the elided elements in topic–comment structures is our universal ability to make compositional semantic associations (see Gil Reference Gil, Miestamo, Sinnemäki and Karlsson2008). In other words, topic–comment constructions, including the elliptical one in (24), are in the end understood on the basis of simply putting together, bit by bit in the given context, the basic meanings of the main constituents that have been expressed.

1. (24) When explaining the daily use of languages from a personal perspective:

2. non-manual topic marker

3. AT-HOME / UNIVERSITY AREA / _COM[Ø SIGN]

4. ‘As for my home, as for the university campus, (I) sign.’

5. (Jantunen et al. Reference Jantunen, Burger, De Weerdt, Seilola, Wainio, Crasborn, Efthimiou, Fotinea, Hanke, Kristoffersen and Mesch2012; dialogue data set 1, participant Jr, clause 12)

In topic–comment structures in which the topic resembles either the S/A or P argument, ellipsis is almost obligatory. Examples of such structures are given in (25); in (25a), the topic is a unit resembling an A argument whereas in (25b) it resembles a P argument.

1. (25)

   1. a. non-manual topic marker

   2. OWN BAPTISE AUNT / _COM[Ø LIVE SWEDEN+DIRECTION]

   3. ‘As for my godmother, (she) lives in Sweden.’

   4. (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2009)

   5. b. non-manual topic marker

   6. KEY + INDEX-2down / _COM[WOMAN Ø TAKE-2down]

   7. ‘As for the key, a woman picks (it) up.’

   8. (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2009)

In the formal framework (e.g., Liddell Reference Liddell1980,Footnote ⁵ Aarons Reference Aarons1996, Sandler & Lillo-Martin Reference Sandler and Lillo-Martin2006), the topics in (25a) and (25b) have been analyzed as complements (subjects, objects) moved from their clause-internal position to the clause-external left-detached (or corresponding) position. This view presumes that such topics are still in a semantic and syntactic relation to the predicate/nucleus. In the study of FinSL, the structures in (25) have not been treated in this way. Instead, they have been considered to be independent topic–comment structures that involve no movement of any unit. In other words, the structures in (25) have been claimed to be similar to those in (9), with a frame-setting adjunct-like topic that has no syntactic or semantic relationship to the predicate/nucleus (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008, Reference Jantunen2009).

The investigation of ellipsis provides support for the ‘no move’ analysis of topics in (25), which is preferred in research into FinSL. Although it would be a marked option, it is definitely possible to produce both examples so that their comment clauses include an anaphoric pronoun referring to the referent identified by the clause-external topic (see the symbol Ø in the examples). If the topics were moved, they would still have a relationship with the predicate/nucleus, and no pronouns could be used in their respective positions in the comment clause. Consequently, the clauses are simply elliptical (and not incomplete due to any movement) and, in fact, represent instances of near obligatory zero anaphora.

5.4 Blend structures

Wulf et al. (Reference Wulf, Dudis, Bailey and Lucas2002) have shown statistically that the grammatical use of blends (constructed action in their terminology) is often a catalyst for elliptical clausal structures in signed language (see also Johnston & Schembri Reference Johnston and Schembri2007). The surrogate blend in (26), taken from Lukasczyk (Reference Lukasczyk2008), provides an example of this in FinSL. In (26), the signer begins his narrative with a blend in which he presents the protagonist, who is sitting in a train. He then goes on to report the actions and mental processes of the protagonist by first producing the verbal sign LOOK-AT (directed towards the mentally constructed window). Syntactically, the verbal functions as the transitive nucleus of a clause and could be expected to require an expression of both A and P core arguments. However, in (26), neither of these is present overtly. Instead, their referents are constructed mentally on the basis of the context created by the blend. In the end, the mental image of the blend is so strong that the only possible way of making sense of the referents is to assume that the agentive one is the protagonist himself and the more patient-like is the generic abstraction ‘something outside the window’.

1. (26) surrogate

2. [Ø LOOK-AT-outside Ø] COME-INTO-MY-MIND ’ ME LITTLE. . .

3. ‘As (I) sat there and looked out the window a memory from my childhood came into my mind. . .’

4. (Lukasczyk Reference Lukasczyk2008)

Sentence (27) contains another example of the relationship between a surrogate blend and an elliptical clause. In (27), the argument structure of the transitive predicate look(x,y) is once again realized incompletely because the NP P argument – supposed to convey the meaning ‘text (on the computer screen)’ – is elided. However, from the point of view of semantic interpretation, this is not a problem because the blend of the signer into the protagonist provides all the required information for the construction of the correct meaning. In this case, the blend is manifested through the signer's body posture, eye gaze, and the downward movement of the hand and fingers, which represent the eyes. Overall, the blend explicates the meaning by creating a pantomimic image of the signer actually reading the text from the computer screen.

1. (27) ___________________________(   )____________

2. COMPUTER / ME WRITE - KEYBOARD / [ME LOOK-AT-

3. surrogate

4. up-down Ø] // BETTER . . .

5. ‘As I read the (text) that I had written (on the screen) I noticed that [the two paragraphs were better in the opposite order . . .]’

6. (Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008)

5.5 Type 2 verbals

One more grammatical context in which ellipsis is clearly favored in FinSL revolves around the use of indicating Type 2 verbals (see Table 1 above). The Type 2 verbals include a gestural component which allows them to be meaningfully directed in space between referents of the situations they encode (Liddell Reference Liddell2003; Jantunen Reference Jantunen2008, Reference Jantunen and Jantunen2010). As the referents are indicated by the forms of the verbals themselves, their overt expression within the clause is unnecessary by definition.

The locations of the referents may be either physical or grammatically established. In (28a), the Type 2 verbal TEACH is directed between two physically present persons. The clause formed around the verbal does not contain overtly expressed A or P but their referents are easily retrieved from the physical context from the knowledge that the verbal TEACH always points towards the patient-like referent. In (28b), the locations of the referents are first established by means of tokenization (see Section 3). After this, the Type 2 verbal HIT, forming a clause by itself, is directed from the first location to the second one. The overall meaning of the clause is inferred on the basis of the established tokens and the directionality.

1. (28)

   1. a. During a discussion about teaching:

   2. [Ø TEACH-me-you Ø]

   3. ‘(I) teach (you).’

   4. b. j-u-s-s-i INDEX-3_token-a / p-e-k-k-a INDEX-4_-token-b / [Ø HIT-3–4 Ø]

   5. ‘[After establishing tokens for Jussi and Pekka:] (Jussi) hits (Pekka).’

In everyday communication, directing Type 2 verbals between the locations of referents may not be very common in FinSL (see De Beuzeville, Johnston & Schembri Reference De Beuzeville, Johnston and Schembri2009 for Australian Sign Language). Instead, it may be that the phenomenon is used extensively only in certain textual contexts, such as in formal reporting and in education (Lautala Reference Lautala2012). In these contexts, the primary function of the directionality – and, consequently, also of the ellipsis – may ultimately be to increase textual cohesion (Lautala Reference Lautala2012).

Type 2 verbals have been found to be linked to the phenomenon of blending (see De Beuzeville et al. Reference De Beuzeville, Johnston and Schembri2009). Also other contexts favoring ellipsis (blends and Type 2 verbals included) are often realized at the same time. This makes the overall effect of ellipsis sometimes appear very strong as it is possible for the discourse to proceed only with a very minimal amount of lexically expressed information.