2.4.5. Pragmatic and semantic conditions licensing null arguments
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 ixa sistera ixb motherb suggest3b 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.
