2.2.1 Features relevant for agent defocusing in Finnish Sign Language

A referential agent can be expressed in FinSL with a full noun phrase (NP) (Rissanen 1985: 126–127; Jantunen 2008; 2010), pronominal pointing sign (Rissanen 1998: 105) or a null (Ala-Sippola 2012; Jantunen 2013; 2018). In a prototypical transitive clause, the agent is usually expressed at the beginning of the clause, the most typical sign order being AVP⁶ (e.g. BOY EAT APPLE⁷ ‘A boy eats an apple’), but at least the orders APV and PAV are possible as well (Jantunen 2008; 2017b). It is also very common to omit the agent in FinSL, which makes prototypical transitive clauses uncommon in FinSL (Ala-Sippola 2012; Jantunen 2013). In clauses where the agent is omitted, the order of the V and P can be either PV or VP (Ala-Sippola 2012; Jantunen 2013).

A special property of sign languages is their use of space. Pronominal pointing signs that are functional equivalents of pronouns, as well as indicating verbs that can be modified spatially, can be directed deictically to referents that are present in a situation (e.g. Liddell 2003; de Beuzeville et al. 2009; Jantunen 2010; Cormier, Schembri & Woll 2013; Johnston 2013). This means that contrary to the typical use of third person pronouns in spoken languages (Siewierska 2004: 7), in order to be referential, a pronominal non-first person pointing sign does not necessarily need an antecedent (see e.g. Huang 2000) naming the referent with a full NP. Instead, the pointing sign is typically directed towards a physically present referent. However, these pronominal pointing signs are also used anaphorically. In anaphoric use, they point towards locations in the signing space that have been associated with previously mentioned referents (Rissanen 1985: 18–36; 1998: 10; Johnston & Schembri 2007: 271–272; Cormier et al. 2013; Johnston 2013).

Like pointing signs, so too indicating verbs can be used deictically or anaphorically (Jantunen 2010; see also de Beuzeville et al. 2009). An indicating verb in FinSL can be modified in the signing space so that it shows clearly which referent is agent and which is patient, usually with a movement starting from the location of the agent and ending at the location of the patient. An indicating verb can be directed towards referents that are present in the situation (deictic use). Alternatively, it can be directed towards certain locations that have been associated with previously mentioned referents (anaphoric use). When an indicating verb shows the semantic roles by modification, any overt expression of the referent is redundant and it is often omitted (Wulf, Dudis, Bailey & Lucas 2002; Jantunen 2013). Studies on agent defocusing in sign languages have shown that these indicating verbs can be used and modified in the way described, even when they do not refer to a specific referent, and some researchers (Barberà & Quer 2013; Rankin 2013) have also mentioned the non-referential use of pointing signs.

In this paper, indicating verbs as well as pronominal pointing signs in sign languages are seen as blends of morphemic and gestural elements: this follows many linguists working within the cognitive-functional framework (Liddell 2003; de Beuzeville et al. 2009; Jantunen 2010; Cormier et al. 2013; Johnston 2013; Fenlon et al. 2018; Schembri et al. 2018). Language is understood broadly, meaning that gestural elements are not seen as non-linguistic but as an inherent part of the language (see e.g. Jantunen 2017a; Schembri et al. 2018). Traditionally, the spatial modification of verbs has been seen as a morphological agreement and these verbs are widely known as agreement verbs (see Mathur & Rathmann 2012 for an overview). However, this has been questioned, first by Liddell (1995; see also 2003), who proposed that the modification of these verbs should be analyzed as a pointing gesture incorporated into the form of the sign, and his view has been supported by several studies based on corpora (de Beuzeville et al. 2009; Fenlon et al. 2018). Arguments for analyzing the spatial modification of verbs and pointings as gestural are, e.g., that contrary to the rules of grammatical agreement, it is impossible to categorize and list the morphemes, since the pointing and the verb can be directed anywhere in the space; that the modification is motivated iconically, not by grammatical class; and that the modification of the verbs is not obligatory (Liddell 2003; de Beuzeville et al. 2009; Fenlon et al. 2018; Schembri et al. 2018).

In addition to the previously mentioned indicating verbs, FinSL has two other main verb classes. Plain verbs are purely morphematic and cannot indicate semantic roles such as agent and patient in their form (Jantunen 2010). Some of the plain verbs, locatable plain verbs, can be located meaningfully in space (Ala-Sippola 2012).⁸ Depicting verbs (cf. depicting verbs in e.g. Liddell 2003) include a morphematic handshape that can refer to the agent or the patient and can depict iconically for example the movement or handling of an entity (Jantunen 2010). There were no depicting verbs in the agent-defocusing constructions in the data, and therefore they are not fully described here.

In addition to the hands, sign languages make use of non-manual articulators (including the head, face, eye gaze, arms, and torso), and these have also been connected to agent defocusing. The signer can represent the situation from a certain participant’s perspective, indicate a referent or show more or less the participant’s actions or feelings in the situation being described using many or just one of the non-manual articulators. Constructed action or CA has been defined as a phenomenon in which the signer uses her hands, face and other parts of the body to enact the actions, emotions, thoughts or sayings of a certain participant in a situation, and it has been suggested that it has different levels depending on how many articulators are involved and whether lexical signs are used at the same time (Cormier, Smith & Sevcikova-Sehyr 2015).

Many different terms have been used to describe the use of these non-manual articulators (for a detailed discussion, see Cormier et al. 2015). Eye gaze and orientation of the body or head have also been analyzed as non-manual agreement, similar to the “agreement” of verbs (e.g. Neidle, Kegl, MacLaughlin, Bahan & Lee 2000). In recent years, the term constructed action (CA) has been increasingly used among functionally oriented linguists, and CA is seen as a gestural phenomenon, a form of enacting, not a morphological one (for FinSL see Jantunen 2017a). It has been argued that CA is an optional discourse strategy in FinSL: some signers use it more than others (Jantunen 2017a; see also Ferrara & Johnston 2014). Also, Jantunen (2017a) has shown that CA is used more frequently with depicting verbs than with plain and indicating verbs.

Cormier et al. (2015: 20–22) suggest dividing CA into three prototypes: overt, reduced and subtle. With overt CA, the signer fully assumes the character role, and all the articulators of the signer represent the actions and emotions of the character. Elements of explicit narration, such as lexical signs or entity classifiers, are not used at all. With reduced CA, the signer also assumes the character role using many CA articulators, such as face, head, torso and eye gaze, but some narration is also involved. With subtle CA, the signer makes active use of only one or a few CA articulators, while primarily narrating with lexical signs. This study is based on the assumption that the body lean, head orientation and eye gaze used with lexical signs are elements of CA.

2.2.2 Previous research on agent defocusing in sign languages

One construction defocusing the agent in sign languages has been most frequently described and seems to be very similar across sign languages. In this construction, the agent is omitted and the event is expressed from the perspective of the patient using the phenomenon identifiable as CA (CA:patient).⁹ It has been identified at least in American Sign Language (Kegl 1990; Janzen et al. 2001; Rankin 2013), Irish Sign Language (Leeson 2001), French Sign Language (Guitteny 2006) and Catalan Sign Language (Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr 2017).

In this construction, the movement of the transitive, indicating verb is directed towards the body of the signer, and the signer represents the patient through CA. Dudis (2004) says that the body is partitioned: the hands produce a verb denoting the action of the agent, while the body physically represents the patient. According to Janzen et al. (2001), the most important characteristic is that the eye gaze represents the patient’s perspective, typically being directed towards the location associated with the agent. In addition, there may be other non-manual features that represent the perspective of the patient, such as leaning the body towards the location of the patient and using facial expressions to represent the emotions of the patient. Even though the movement of the verb indicates a location associated with an agent, no referent is associated with that location. Thus, even though an agent is semantically involved in the event described, the identity of the agent is not specified, i.e., it is non-referential. Example (7) is from ASL.

In (7), the situation is viewed from the patient’s perspective, the signer herself, and the patient is in focus. The hands in the verb NAMED^a➔1 are oriented so that the fingertips point towards the signer, and the movement is towards the signer. The agent is not overtly expressed. The movement of the verb begins at a location “a” in the signing space, but there is no referent associated with that location. This means that the agent is non-referential.

This kind of a construction has been labeled as passive by some researchers (Kegl 1990; Janzen et al. 2001; Guitteny 2006). The passive construction is said to contrast with the active in that in an active construction, the event is told completely from the agent’s perspective, whereas in the passive the perspective is that of the patient (see Janzen et al. 2001). In the active, the movement of the verb is away from the body of the signer towards a location in the signing space with which the patient is associated, and the non-manual features represent the agent’s perspective. However, as Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr (2017) point out, since the movement of the verb is not reduced in the so-called passive construction in ASL (in contrast to the analysis of Kegl 1990), the verb is not syntactically or morphologically detransitivized.

Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr (2017) argue that the High-locus construction in Catalan Sign Language, which shares many similarities with the constructions labeled as passive in other sign languages, should not be analyzed as passive but instead as a transitive construction that has a nonspecific subject comparable to agent defocusing constructions with an impersonal third person plural subject (Siewierska & Papastathi 2011). They propose that the omitted argument is a null pro subject which is licensed by agreement. According to Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr (2017), the movement of an indicating verb in a High-locus construction begins in a high location in the signing space, which has not been associated with any referent previously, and ends at the body of the signer with animate patients, or in the neutral signing space with inanimate patients. For plain verbs, the verb is articulated completely in a high location. They argue that the high location, which is used specifically for non-specific interpretation in Catalan Sign Language, contrasts with the low location associated with referential referents, and the construction cannot be analyzed simply as an omission of the agent (Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr 2017: 784–790). However, the use of CA representing the patient is not crucial but only an additional phenomenon used with animate patients.

In a study on defocusing the agent in ASL, Rankin (2013) found several constructions in which the agent is defocused on different levels. She analyzed the interplay of defocusing the agent on the semantic and structural levels. Rankin (2013: 63–64) noted that even if the “passive construction” described by Janzen et al. (2001) does exists in ASL, it is very rare in her elicited data. Rankin found only one occurrence corresponding to the “prototypical passive” (Janzen et al. 2001) in ASL, and in this utterance the patient was the signer herself (Rankin 2013: 64). Janzen et al. (2001: 301) proposed that the use of CA would be needed in order to use a passive construction for third person referents. However, Rankin shows that when the patient is not the first person referent, other strategies are used to defocus the agent.

The most common strategy in Rankin’s data was simply omission of the agent. When indicating verbs were used, the event was typically told from a neutral perspective, in which the signer does not identify herself with either the agent or the patient using CA (Rankin 2013: 32; cf. Janzen et al. 2001: 289). No special passive morphology is used, and the patient is not expressed in subject position (Rankin 2013: 45–55). Patients occur in the same position as that in which they occur in a clause that contains an overt subject, either as non-manually marked topics as in (8) or in a post-verbal object position, as in (9).

The agent omission occurs in ASL with any kind of verbs: plain verbs such as FIX in (8), indicating verbs such as GIVE^➔right in (9), as well as depicting verbs. Rankin (2013: 43) proposes that omission with plain verbs is the most complete way of defocusing the agent. She suggests that the defocusing is more complete when the verb does not refer to the agent at all (Rankin 2013: 58–65). In Rankin’s data, indicating verbs were used in two manners, leading to two different levels of defocusing. Either the beginning location of the movement was at the center of the signing space, not referring to a specific agent (see Liddell 2003: 117), as in (9), or the beginning place was a specific location. The former defocuses the agent to the full extent, the same way as plain verbs do, but the latter gives the agent some focus on a structural level while the agent is semantically non-referential.

A construction that omits the agent without using CA has been identified also in other sign languages (Cuxac 2000: 199; Guitteny 2006; Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr 2017). For French Sign Language, Guitteny (2006: 310–312) and Cuxac (2000: 199) have proposed that this can be done by modifying the indicating verb so that the location for agent is in the neutral space, not associated with any referent. This form appears to be similar to the first option of using indicating verbs with omitted agent in ASL (Rankin 2013), as in (9). Interestingly, Guitteny (2006: 311) found no evidence of agent defocusing by omission in clauses containing a verb articulated on the body of the signer, corresponding to plain verbs. In Catalan Sign Language, by contrast, agent omission (Non-agreeing central construction) has been analyzed as being limited to plain verbs (Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr 2017: 780).

Interestingly, Rankin’s (2013) data also contained utterances in which the event was told from the agent’s perspective using CA (CA:agent) even though the agent was omitted and non-referential (Rankin 2013: 65–68, 91; see also Barberà & Quer 2013: 250–252). In these utterances, the agent’s perspective was marked through the eye gaze (towards the patient) and facial expression (representing the emotions of the agent). These structures were much more common in narrative data than in single elicited utterances. To summarize, in ASL, in a construction in which the agent is defocused by not overtly expressing it, the event can be told from a neutral perspective, from the patient’s perspective or from the agent’s perspective. This implies, contrary to the suggestion by Janzen et al. (2001), that the use of non-manuals to show the perspective is not a crucial property of agent defocusing. The analysis carried out by Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr (2017) supports this observation.

Overt A arguments used non-referentially have been found in Catalan Sign Language (Barberà & Quer 2013) as well as American Sign Language (Rankin 2013). For Catalan Sign Language, Barberà & Quer (2013: 244–245) have found non-referential use of the lexical sign WHO (together with the third person plural pronominal form (pointing) or with the determiner SOME, accompanied with the mouthing alguien ‘someone’). Lexemes used this way are also “a sign that consists of a derived form of the lexical noun PERSON”, and the sign ONE. Signs used non-referentially are usually produced in the upper area of the signing space which, according to the researchers, is reserved for non-referential use, and the modification of the verbs is consistent with that location, as described earlier (Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr 2017). Barberà & Quer (2013: 245) also found that the third person plural pronominal pointing sign alone can be used non-referentially. As for American Sign Language, Rankin (2013: 68–73) has identified the use of impersonal pronouns such as NO-ONE, a plural noun with generic reference (PEOPLE), pronominal pointing signs used non-referentially, and a metonymic use of an inanimate entity as the agent, although these were not common in her data. It has been reported that the first person pronominal pointing sign is used for non-specific reference in Swedish Sign Language, referring anaphorically to a nominal with non-specific reference (Nilsson 2004).

It has been argued for some sign languages that the use of different handshape types of depicting verbs serves to focus on different participants in the event. The use of handling handshapes focuses on the agent, while the use of entity handshapes focuses on the patient, thus defocusing the agent (Benedicto & Brentari 2004; Börstell 2017). Börstell (2017) found that the use of handshapes and perspective interact as argument focusing strategies in Swedish Sign Language. According to the elicited data, agent perspective and handling handshapes are preferred when describing a two-participant situation. However, the agent can be defocused using an instrument handshape or patient perspective, or both.

4.1.1 Simple omission

The most common strategy for defocusing the agent in the data is omission of the agent. Usually it involves no CA. In these clauses, the agent is not mentioned at all, and the clause is similar in form to a clause where a referential agent is omitted. However, there is no antecedent to which a null anaphora could refer, and there is no physically present referent that could be denoted. The agent is unknown, irrelevant or obvious. Example (10) is a clear example of an omitted agent.

In (10), the patient is expressed at the beginning of the clause with the noun phrase FIRST DEAF-CLUB, the verb FOUND follows it, and the peripheral elements expressing place and time are expressed at the end of the clause. The predicate is a locatable plain verb which is not modified spatially and thus tells nothing about the semantic roles or the identity of the participants. The agent is completely defocused.

The patient is usually expressed before the verb, as in (10), the sign order being PV, but it can just as well follow it (sign order VP), or the patient can be omitted. Also in clauses containing a null anaphora, these same orders occur (Ala-Sippola 2012; Jantunen 2013), so the sign order does not make a difference.

Agent omission is used both with plain verbs and with indicating verbs, but plain verbs occur more often in the data. If a locatable plain verb is located meaningfully, the location in which the sign is articulated indicates the location of the event rather than the agent. Indicating verbs can be modified or not. If the patient is a non-first person referent, the verb can indicate the patient through the end location of the movement or the orientation.

In clauses containing a simple omission, the patient is usually a non-first person referent, but can also be the first person. The data contained one clause with a simple omission where the patient was the first person. It is shown in (11). Figure 2 represents the sequence LOOK^right➔1 TRUST OBJPRO^➔1.

Figure 2

The signs of the sequence LOOK^right➔1’ TRUST OBJPRO^➔1 ‘we are not trusted’.

Example (11) contains two clauses defocusing the agent, built around the predicates LOOK and TRUST, where the patient is the first person and the agent is omitted. The verb LOOK is produced with both hands, carrying the meaning that the agent is plural. It is directed so that the beginning place is to the right for the right hand and to the left for the left hand. No referent is associated with these locations. The end location is close to the signer. The agent is understood to be someone other than the signer and the patient is first person plural, appearing here as a null anaphora, the antecedent of which is expressed at the beginning of the example with the sign PT^➔1-pl. The second clause contains the predicate TRUST, which is a plain verb and cannot be modified. It is followed by the sign glossed as OBJPRO^➔1 (see Börstell 2017: 155–173), expressing the patient. Being articulated on the body of the signer, it indicates that the signer is the patient. As can be seen from Figure 2, during the predicate LOOK and TRUST, the eye gaze is directed towards the camera and the body posture is neutral. Also the facial expression of the signer is rather neutral, i.e., there is no CA representing the patient’s perspective. The negation is expressed with a headshake.

Simple omission is used with both animate and inanimate patients, most patients in the data being inanimate. In (10) the patient is inanimate, while in (11) it is animate. There are also cases where the P argument is a clause.

4.1.2 Omission with constructed action representing the patient

Some clauses with an omitted agent include non-manual elements that can be analyzed as reduced or subtle CA (Cormier et al. 2015) representing the patient (CA:patient). These two types of CA are not systematically separated here, and they could equally well be referred to as non-overt CA (see Cormier et al. 2015). The CA is not overt since the hands are always used to produce lexical signs, i.e., the predicate of the clause, while in overt CA, all the articulators of the signer would be used to represent the actions and emotions of the participant (Cormier et al. 2015). In these clauses, the agent is omitted and non-referential, as in the simple omission described in 4.1.1. In addition, non-manual elements are used to represent the perspective of the patient. Non-manual features that are used include body lean sideways, body lean backwards, head directed towards the agent and eye gaze directed towards the agent. The facial expression tends to be rather neutral. None of the features is used in every clause of this type, and the number and combination of non-manual articulators vary. Sometimes the non-manual elements are so weak that it is open to interpretation whether there is any CA or not.

One clear instance of the use of CA, which can be analyzed as reduced CA, is presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3

A clause defocusing the agent with the omission of the agent and constructed action representing the patient.

The verbal predicate NOTIFY (framed in Figure 3) is articulated so that the hand touches the signer’s right shoulder. The agent is associated with the space to the right of the signer. The non-manual elements start already during the sign DAY and continue during the articulation of the predicate, gradually neutralizing. Eye gaze and head are directed to the right of the signer, towards the place of the non-referential agent. The body leans left and backwards, away from the agent. The eyes are widened, which can be interpreted as expressing the emotions of the patient, such as being surprised.

In these clauses, an indicating verb is directed from a semantically empty space towards the body of the signer. The modification of the verb indicates that the signer (or the referent associated with the signer) is the patient, but the patient is usually also lexically unexpressed. The beginning space of the movement can be in a high location in the signing space, but it does not need to be. In Figure 3 it is at a neutral level. In two instances the agent seems to be associated with a high location in the signing space. The upper space is analyzed as being used iconically to reflect the real or metaphorical relations of the situation. For example, with the predicate TEACH, the signer iconically reflects pupils’ perspective: pupils look up to their teachers.

In all the clauses where the agent is omitted and CA is used to represent the patient, the patient is actually the first person referent. Either the meaning is ‘me’, when the signer is quoting a deaf person interviewed, or the meaning is ‘we the deaf’, which is expressed by the signs PT^➔1-pl DEAF. The leaning of the body does not change the referent associated with the signer. The data contains no cases where the signer chooses to represent a third person referent using CA:patient in order to omit the agent.

Example (12) shows that the modification of the verb in agent defocusing constructions with omission of the agent and CA:patient is similar to the modification used in clauses where there is a referential agent and CA:patient is used. The relevant parts of the example are illustrated with still images in Figure 4.

Figure 4

The signs WORK+GIVE ‘employer’ and REFUSE ‘refuse’.

In (12), the referent ‘deaf’ is associated with the body of the signer using the signs DEAF INDIVIDUAL^➔1. With the compound WORK+GIVE^right➔1, the referent ‘employer’ is associated with the space to the right of the signer (Figure 4a). In the next utterance, an indicating verb REFUSE is directed from the right towards the signer (Figure 4b), indicating that the agent is the employer and the patient is the deaf employee. In this clause, the signer represents a third person referent. The facial expressions of the signer represent the emotions of the deaf employee, the patient of the predicate REFUSE.

This clause resembles the clause in Figure 3. In both clauses, the verbal predicate is directed from the agent associated with the space to the right of the signer towards the signer, who represents or is the patient. The CA is used to represent the patient. In the clause in Figure 3, the agent is non-referential, and in the clause in (12) the agent is referential. To conclude, in clauses with omission of the agent and CA:patient, there seems to be no formal difference between clauses with a referential agent and clauses without one. The modification of the verb is similar, CA is used to represent the patient, and both agent and patient are omitted.

However, since the signer has chosen to represent the situation from the perspective of ‘the deaf employee’, the patient of the predicate REFUSE, the patient is more focused than is the agent ‘the employer’. It can thus be analyzed that the agent is defocused to some extent. There is a functional similarity with the English passive, where the agent is expressed in a by-phrase: He was forbidden by the employer to bring an interpreter.

4.1.3 Omission with constructed action representing the agent

Some clauses can be analyzed as including reduced or subtle CA representing the omitted, non-referential agent (CA:agent). The example in Figure 5 is the clearest instance of this. It contains subtle or reduced CA used with the predicate.

Figure 5

A clause defocusing the agent with the omission of the agent and constructed action representing the agent.¹⁴

The predicate is analyzed as consisting of two verbs, ANNOUNCE and NOTIFY. ANNOUNCE is a plain verb. NOTIFY is an indicating verb, the same as was used in the example in Figure 3, but here it is directed in the opposite direction. It is directed towards the location to the right of the signer, which associates the referent ‘population register’, the patient, with that location. The verb is directed slightly toward the upper area of the signing space. Simultaneously with producing the predicate, the signer turns her head to the right, and leans her body slightly to the left or backwards, away from the patient, associating herself not with the patient but with the agent. This can be analyzed as CA:agent. However, the agent is not mentioned in this clause and there is no antecedent. The agent of the predicate ANNOUNCE NOTIFY can be understood as anyone (or everyone) who has registered their mother tongue as sign language in the population register.

The predicate is followed by a clause complement, MY MOTHER+LANGUAGE PI SIGN+LANGUAGE, which is an instance of quotational CA. The person quoted is the non-referential, defocused agent. However, the non-manual elements expressing CA during this clause are very few. In some clauses, only the head expresses CA, being directed towards the space associated with the patient.

4.2.1 Non-first person plural pointing sign as the A argument

The data contains some clauses in which a non-first person plural pointing sign is used non-referentially as the A argument. An example is given in Figure 6.

Figure 6

A clause with a non-first person pointing sign as the A argument and constructed action representing the patient.

In Figure 6, the first sign SOCIETY is analyzed as the topic, marked with widened eyes, raised eyebrows and an eye blink, that sets a spatial interpretative framework for the following clause, the comment (Jantunen 2013: 313). The comment clause begins with an A argument, which is a non-first person pronominal pointing sign, an arch-like pointing to the right. The movement begins slightly to the left and it is directed slightly upwards. It has the form of a pointing that points either anaphorically to a referent that is associated with that space or to a physically present referent, but there is no lexically expressed referent associated with that space or a physically present referent to which the pointing would be directed. This means that the pointing sign is non-referential, i.e., the agent is defocused. The upper space is not analyzed as carrying a special non-specific meaning (cf. Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr 2017). Probably the people who see the deaf as handicapped are conceptualized as metaphorically higher, and also the motoric easiness may affect the articulation. As the example in Figure 5 shows, referential agents can be associated with the upper space as well as non-referential agents, and therefore referential pointing signs can be directed upwards as well. The verbal predicate LOOK is produced with both hands, expressing plurality. It is directed from the space to the right of the signer with the right hand and from the space to the left of the signer with the left hand towards the signer, the patient. The agent is understood to be someone other than the signer, and plural. The patient is expressed after the predicate with the signs PT^➔1-pl DEAF ‘we, the deaf’.

Figure 6 also includes CA. While articulating the verbal predicate LOOK, the head turns to the right, towards the space associated with the agent. Also the body turns in that direction and leans back, away from the agent. These non-manual features are similar to those used with omitted agents when CA is used to represent the patient. Therefore it seems that CA:patient can also be used when the agent is expressed with a non-first person pointing used non-referentially. However, this was the only clause of this type. Other clauses containing a non-first person pointing sign include no CA.

The non-first person pointing sign is used with both plain and indicating verbs. When an indicating verb is used, it is modified the same way as in Figure 6 in both of the two clauses in the data. One of the pointing signs was produced with both hands, the right hand directed to the right and the left hand directed to the left. This sign also had a mouthing with the meaning ‘others’, and it could be argued that this is actually a lexicalized sign. The other non-first person pointing signs were directed to the right. It seems that the patient can be animate or inanimate, and first person or non-first person. The sign order varies a lot.

The agent expressed with a non-first person plural pointing sign is interpreted as excluding at least the signer, possibly also the interlocutor as the third person plural subject cross-linguistically (Siewierska & Papastathi 2011). In the clauses in the data, the agent is understood to be human, corresponding to the definition of R-impersonals (Siewierska 2011), but so are all the agents in the data.

4.2.2 First person pointing sign as the A argument

The data also contains some instances of a first person pronominal pointing sign used non-referentially as the A argument. The clause is constructed in such a way that the agent is expressed with a pronominal pointing sign towards the chest of the signer, denoting typically the signer herself or another referent associated with the signer’s body through CA. However, it can be inferred from the context that the signer does not mean herself, nor is another referent associated with the signer’s body. Example (13) is an excerpt from a section where the signer is giving some recommendations to improve the situation of sign language users. The first person singular pointing sign used in the example is illustrated in Figure 7.

Figure 7

First person singular pointing sign (PT^➔1) used in Example (13).

This excerpt is from the very beginning of the section. The first utterance is presented only as a translation in square brackets. The first person pronominal pointing, i.e., pointing towards the chest of the signer, occurs in the second utterance. The clause begins with the noun phrase MOTHER+LANGUAGE ‘mother tongue’ expressing the patient. It is followed by the expression of an agent, a first person singular pointing sign, which is followed by the predicate, the plain verb ACQUIRE. It is clear from the context that the signer is not talking about herself but about potentially anyone. The agent can be anyone, including the signer and the interlocutor. This usage is similar to the non-referential usage of the first person pronoun in Finnish (Helasvuo 2008). It also has a conditional context, which is characteristic of a non-referential interpretation in Finnish.

When a non-referential first person pointing sign is followed by a null anaphora, this also has a non-referential reading. The last clause in (13) contains a P argument, PT^➔front-pl LANGUAGE ‘other languages’, expressing the patient, a predicate LEARN, and a null anaphora expressing the agent. The null anaphora refers back to the non-referential first person singular pointing sign in the previous sentence, and therefore also the null anaphora is non-referential.

In addition to a first person singular pronominal pointing, there are one or two occurrences of a first person plural pointing sign used non-referentially. In one of them it is not clear from the articulation whether the pointing is intended to be singular or plural. This clause also contains CA:agent. It seems thus that CA:agent can be used with the first person pointing sign as the A argument, when the pointing sign is used non-referentially.