A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

As we saw in previous sections, null arguments in LIS are more frequent with agreement verbs, and they can be licensed by discourse antecedents or sentence-mate antecedents. Other possible licensors are topic phrase (PRAGMATICS 4.2) and role shift (SYNTAX 3.3.3).

         If an argument is coreferential with the topic phrase produced at the beginning of the sentence, it may be dropped. Such case is exemplified below.

                    top                                                                          ht: a

         pizza pe ix₁ think ix_a sister_a ix_b mother_b suggest_3b done

         ‘That pizza, I think that my sister has already suggested (it) to our mother.’

The direct object of the embedded verb suggest is omitted. This argument can be inferred, as it co-refers with the topic phrase pizza pe.

         When role shift is used in signed discourse, the referent whose perspective is adopted can be inferred from the signer’s non-manuals. In the example below, both the bodypart classifier referring to the tail and the co-articulated non-manuals (i.e. tongue protrusion and left body lean) referring to the denoted entity facilitate the identification of the relevant referent, a dog.

                                  rs: dog

         CL(G): ‘wag_tail’

         ‘(The dog) was wagging his tail in an excited way.’

The combination of predicate classifier and role shift helps the addressee to retrieve the subject, which therefore can be omitted.