4.2.5. Possessive phrases with the possessed elided
In particular discourse contexts, the possessee might represent shared knowledge. In these cases, LIS allows the possibility to omit the possessee. This is illustrated in the two examples below, in which the possessee car is omitted since it can be retrieved from the context.
a. maria poss3 comfortable
‘Maria’s is comfortable.’ (talking about cars)
b. poss3 comfortable
‘His/hers is comfortable.’ (talking about cars)
It is interesting to note that when the possessee is absent, the signer might help the interlocutor retrieve it through specific non-manual cues: i) squint eyes, which signal that the information is known by the addressee, as in (a) above, and ii) eye gaze, which indicates that the possessee is present in the extralinguistic context, as in (b) above.
