A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

The concessive clause must precede the main clause. This is also the case in concessive conditionals, while, in adversative coordination, the two clauses may be inverted without a change in meaning, as shown in the examples below.

         a.         l-u-c-a_a ix_a cat allergy exist but ix_b maria buy cat

         ‘Luca is allergic to cats, but Maria buys one.’

         b.         maria ix_a cat buy but l-u-c-a_b ix_b allergy cat exist

         ‘Maria buys a cat, but Luca is allergic to them.’

A final property differentiating between adversative coordination on the one hand and concessive clauses and concessive conditionals on the other hand, is the possibility to produce the first clause of the construction is isolation. Only the sentence-initial clause of an adversative coordinate construction can be produced on its own as shown below:

         l-u-c-a ix₃ cat allergy exist

         ‘Luca is allergic to cats.’

The impossibility to produce the sentence-initial concessive clause in isolation, the obligatory non-manual markings spreading over it and the impossibility to invert the order of the two clauses seem to suggest that the functional equivalent of concessive clauses (as well as concessive conditionals) in LIS are subordinate clauses.