Footnotes

1 Languages which could be classified as dependent-marking are, according to Tallerman (1998:110-111), as follows: German, Greek, Armenian, the Slavic languages (e.g. Russian, Polish, Czech and Bulgarian), the native Australian Pama-Nyungan family (Dyirbal, Yiding), the Northeast Caucasian languages (Chechen) and Dravidian languages (Malayalam).

2 In fact, this is a rather strong statement, as Kyle and Woll (1985:162-172) point out. Although the extent of the mutual intelligibility is still unclear, communication is possible across different sign languages - perhaps due to the simplified language use and the willingness to communicate.

3 Despite the etymology of the word phonology, it is customary to talk about the phonology of sign languages. The term cherology, based on the Greek word meaning ‘hand’, has also been used, though the former is more widespread.

4 Studies carried out by Klima & Bellugi (1979) on iconicity in ASL demonstrate that signs are often deceptively iconic: when 10 hearing persons were shown 90 common ASL signs and asked to guess their meaning, none of the 81 signs out of 90 were correctly identified and the other 9 signs were guessed correctly by only a few persons. Only some signs were sufficiently transparent for non-ASL users to guess their meaning.

5 “This notion of past time as ‘behind’ and future time ‘ahead’ finds parallels in most European spoken languages, where time and space are connected in the same way” (Kyle & Woll 1985:143). For example, in Estonian we can use the expression see nädalaid kestnud arutelu on nüüd seljataga (literally, ‘this for weeks lasted discussion is now behind back’) or eesolev/ootav külaskäik (literally, ‘ahead being/waiting visit’). There are also cultures where time reference and space may have an opposite relationship, e.g. in Urubu Kaapor Sign Language (among Brazilian Indians), in Japanese Sign Language, etc. The past is located in front of the signer and the future behind, probably representing a world view of the past as something visible, and the future as unknowable (Kyle & Woll 1985:144).

6 The teaching method is still oral at Tartu Hiie School, although Total Communication (i.e. signs and speech used together in classroom activities) is allegedly being used. It is of importance to note that in this school the term ‘total communication’ stands for the speech visualised with signs.

7 See Vahur Laiapea’s introduction to sign language linguistics illustrated with examples from ESL (1992), also about the types of motivated signs in ESL (1993).
  Toom has been the author of several exercise books (e.g. 1999, 1990), and of two glossaries (1989, 1990).

8 I have translated the pointing sign glossed as INDEX as ‘this/that/the’ because it is the direct translation from Estonian determiner/demonstrative ‘see’ which is often given as an Estonian counterpart to that sign by ESL translators. The letters -f, -fr, -fl indicate the direction of the index finger in the signing space, standing for front, front-right, front-left, respectively.

9 The sign which I have glossed as JUST appears to function as the emphatic particle. In Estonian, the counterpart for that sign is given as ‘sooh!’ which clearly carries no meaning, but seems to add emphasis to the sign it occurs with.