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• Early Research on Finnish Sign Language:In the Footsteps of Great Role Models
• Terhi Rissanen (bio), Päivi Rainò (bio), and Ritva Takkinen (bio)

Research on Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) started in 1982 at Helsinki University. The main drivers behind it were Professor Fred Karlsson, then head of the Department of General Linguistics at Helsinki University and Liisa Kauppinen, who was the executive director of the Finnish Association of the Deaf (and who, in later years, received honorary doctorates from Gallaudet University, the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, and Trinity College in Ireland). The first paid researchers in this new endeavor were a linguistics student, Terhi Rissanen, together with Thomas Sandholm, a native FinSL signer. Their combined experiences are recounted in the first section of this article. In the second section, Päivi Rainò, who grew [End Page 362]

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Early researchers Terhi Rissanen and Thomas Sandholm.

up in a signing family, recounts how she joined this team as a student intern. The third section is by Ritva Takkinen, who describes how she became interested in signing while studying to be a speech therapist in the early 1970s and went on to do research on the acquisition of FinSL while working on her MA thesis and later her PhD thesis.

Terhi Rissanen

When I started my sign language research career in 1982 at Helsinki University, I was a twenty-nine-year-old with a BA in linguistics and a mother of two little children: a deaf boy and a hearing girl.

I had studied English philology, Finno-Ugric languages, general linguistics, and pedagogy at the University of Turku, a unique combination of my own choosing that had no clear path to any established profession. In 1974, I married a man who had studied another unconventional combination—cultural anthropology, Arabic literature, and Orientalism at Helsinki University. In 1976, we had a deaf son. This came as something of a surprise, since we had no known deaf relatives in either family tree.

In 1977, I received a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom at the Summer Institute of Linguistics at the University of Reading, where I learned about the legacy of Eunice Pike and Eugene Nida. Among other things, we were taught how to work with a native informant of an exotic language and perform tasks like notetaking [End Page 363] of an unwritten language. When I started my work with Thomas Sandholm in 1982, this skill would come in handy.

Thomas and I started our FinSL research with The Snowman, the animated movie based on the children's book by Raymond Briggs. There had been a European project to collect signed versions of the film, and Thomas's deaf mother, Hely Sandholm, had signed the Finnish version. She was a renowned teacher of FinSL, a special lady who was very inspiring. Once she came to me and signed: you me / we-two colleagues / we-two deaf children mother you-me / we-two same identity. That was the most significant hug I've ever received from the Deaf community. Hely is deeply missed. During my career, I have wondered if there were other sign language researchers who were also parents of deaf children. Maybe there aren't too many of us.

Thomas and I sat side by side in front of a TV monitor and glossed the signs of The Snowman in Finnish words in a chart (table 1) and marked into each slot their locations, orientations, and movements with a numeric reference linked to a specific location in space. We aimed for high accuracy in the description of the ninety-two glossed pages of the story.

The work was laborious: We had no Photoshop in 1982, just VHS tapes, a video recorder, and a TV monitor with remote controls. Because the computer had no graphics interface, we had to program everything manually, but our technical skills were low. I had taken a course in computer science in which only the lecturer had a computer, while all the rest of us watched the overhead projector screen and wrote down what was said. So, when I got my first Macintosh, with its...

中文翻译：

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芬兰手语的早期研究：追随伟大榜样的脚步

以下是内容的简短摘录，以代替摘要：

• 芬兰手语的早期研究：追随伟大榜样的脚步
• Terhi Rissanen（简介）、Päivi Rainò（简介）和 Ritva Takkinen（简介）

芬兰手语 (FinSL)的研究于1982 年在赫尔辛基大学开始。其背后的主要推动者是时任赫尔辛基大学普通语言学系主任 Fred Karlsson 教授和芬兰聋人协会执行董事 Liisa Kauppinen（后来获得加劳德特荣誉博士学位）大学、芬兰于韦斯屈莱大学和爱尔兰三一学院）。这项新工作的第一批付费研究人员是语言学学生 Terhi Rissanen 和本地 FinSL 签名者 Thomas Sandholm。本文第一部分叙述了他们的综合经验。第二部分，成长的Päivi Rainò [完第362页]

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早期研究人员特希·里萨宁 (Terhi Rissanen) 和托马斯·桑德霍姆 (Thomas Sandholm)。

她出生在一个签约家庭，讲述了她如何作为学生实习生加入这个团队。第三部分由 Ritva Takkinen 撰写，她描述了她在 20 世纪 70 年代初学习成为一名语言治疗师时如何对手语产生兴趣，并在撰写硕士论文和后来的博士论文时继续研究收购 FinSL。

特希·里萨宁

1982 年，当我在赫尔辛基大学开始手语研究生涯时，我二十九岁，拥有语言学学士学位，也是两个小孩的母亲：一个是聋哑男孩，一个是听力正常的女孩。

我在图尔库大学学习了英语语言学、芬兰-乌戈尔语、普通语言学和教育学，这是我自己选择的独特组合，没有通往任何既定职业的明确途径。1974 年，我嫁给了一个在赫尔辛基大学学习另一种非传统组合——文化人类学、阿拉伯文学和东方学的男人。1976年，我们有一个聋子儿子。这有点令人惊讶，因为我们两个家谱中都没有已知的聋哑亲戚。

1977年，我获得了前往英国雷丁大学夏季语言学学院学习的奖学金，在那里我了解了尤尼斯·派克和尤金·奈达的遗产。除此之外，我们还学会了如何与外来语言的母语提供者合作，并执行诸如记录不成文语言的笔记[第363页]之类的任务。1982 年，当我开始与 Thomas Sandholm 合作时，这项技能就派上了用场。

Thomas 和我从《雪人》开始了我们的 FinSL 研究，这是一部根据 Raymond Briggs 的儿童读物改编的动画电影。欧洲有一个项目收集这部电影的签名版本，托马斯的聋哑母亲海莉·桑德霍姆 (Hely Sandholm) 签署了芬兰版本。她是 FinSL 的一位著名老师，一位非常鼓舞人心的特殊女士。有一次她来找我，签了字：你我/我们-两个同事/我们-两个聋哑孩子妈妈你-我/我们-两个同一身份。这是我从聋人社区收到的最重要的拥抱。深深地怀念海莉。在我的职业生涯中，我想知道是否还有其他手语研究人员也是聋哑儿童的父母。或许我们的人数并不多。

托马斯和我并排坐在电视显示器前，在图表（表 1）中用芬兰语标注了雪人的标志，并在每个槽位中标记了它们的位置、方向和运动，并用与特定目标相关的数字参考来标记。空间中的位置。我们的目标是对九十二页的故事进行高度准确的描述。

这项工作很辛苦：1982 年我们没有 Photoshop，只有 VHS 磁带、录像机和带遥控器的电视显示器。由于计算机没有图形界面，我们必须手动编写所有程序，但我们的技术水平很低。我上了一门计算机科学课程，其中只有讲师有一台计算机，而我们其他人都看着高架投影仪屏幕并写下所说的内容。所以，当我得到我的第一台 Macintosh 时，它...