3.6. Determiners
Determiners are a class of elements that have the main function of providing information on referentiality, that is the relation between the noun and what the noun refers to. Determiners are divided into definite and indefinite. While definite determiners encode that both sender and addressee may identify the discourse referent, indefinite determiners mark that the addressee may not identify the entity being talked about. On the one hand, definite determiners are used to: (i) refer to something or someone that has been previously mentioned in the discourse (“The article that we read last week was about definiteness”, with the article being previously mentioned); (ii) refer to something or someone that is easily identifiable in the extra-linguistic context (“Could you pass me the book?”, with the book being visible to the interlocutors); (iii) refer to a referent that is unique in its genre (“The sun is shining” or “The driver is very good”, when talking about a bus trip). On the other hand, indefinite determiners are used to introduce new referents into the discourse (“Next week we will read an article about definiteness”, where the article is a first-mention entity). A very common strategy of determiner forms is pointing signs. Pointing signs in LSC, as in many sign languages, are polifunctional, they may have different functions, namely as pronouns, determiners, demonstratives, locatives [LEXICON 1.2.2].