A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

LIS, as other sign languages, shows peculiar strategies to keep track of the referents during the discourse, thanks to its visual-gestural nature. Besides classifiers, LIS can also employ buoys (PRAGMATICS 2.2.3), constructions in which the non-dominant hand remains in a stationary configuration while the dominant hand continues to sign. Therefore, the two hands are used independently and articulate two different pieces of information simultaneously. In LIS, we find several kinds of buoys, which are explored in (PRAGMATICS 2.2.3): list buoys, pointer buoys, theme buoys and fragment buoys.

            Here we provide an example of list buoy, which can be used to describe a small set of referents through a list. In the example below, the signer describes the components of his family by providing the names of all the children: the non-dominant hand displays different configurations for numbers, while the dominant hand conveys the names. Specifically, the non-dominant hand keeps track of the list ensuring a co-referential link to the discourse referents, which are introduced and described with the dominant hand.

            ix₁ brother three exist

            dom:    ix_[thumb] lawyer ix_[index] doctor ix_[middle] teacher

            n-dom: three----------------------------------------------------

            ‘I have three brothers, the first is a doctor, the second a lawyer, and the third a teacher.’

Within the discourse, the signer may refer back to one item of the list by pointing to the finger of the non-dominant hand which were previously associated to that referent.