A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Definite noun phrases are nominal arguments that denote discourse referents with the property of being univocally identifiable, as shown in (a) or the property of being familiar to both the signer and the interlocutor. Entities are familiar when: i) they are co-present in the context where the utterance is pronounced, as shown in (b), ii) are culturally shared in the common ground of the signer and the addressee, as shown in (c), or iii) had been previously mentioned in the discourse, as shown in (d).

                                                                            tl

         a.         moon SASS(L): ‘round_big’

         ‘The moon is completely full.’

                                                                                       rel

         b.         key_a ix_a table CL(closed G): ‘put_on_a’ ix_a atake₁ 

         ‘I took the key that was on the table.’

                                       top

          c.         president ix_a person++_b CL(5): ‘all’_{b b}hate_a

         ‘As for the President, the people hate him.’

         d.         street man person_a ix_a stroll. suddenly CL(5): ‘cloud_over’ rain. man ix_a take umbrella

         ‘A man was walking on the street, when suddenly it clouded over and began to rain a lot. The man took an umbrella.’