Fixed and NOT free : Revisiting the order of the main clausal constituents in Finnish Sign Language from a corpus perspective

Abstract

This squib investigates the order of the main clausal constituents in verbal-centered clauses in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). With the help of the frequencies calculated from narratives included in the recently compiled FinSL corpus, the study suggests that the order of the main constituents in FinSL clauses is more fixed than has been claimed in a previous study. With intransitive and transitive clauses with a Type 1 or Type 2 verbal predicate, the study shows that their internal structures strongly favor the orders SV and AVP, respectively, although both S/A and P core arguments are often left lexically unexpressed. Concerning Type 3 verbal predicates, the study shows that they most typically form simple sentences on their own and that if they appear with any additional nominal material, this material tends to precede the verbal.