The basic argument structure of a verb can be extended to include an extra argument expressing a non-obligatory thematic role. In the sentence below, an extra beneficiary argument, dog poss(G)1, is added to the sentence yielding the word order subject-beneficiary-object-verb.
ix1 dog poss(G)1 ix collar ix1 buy
‘I buy a collar for my dog.’
An extra argument specifying the subject matter can be added, as in the example below, where it is specified what the topic of the talk is, namely, the school for the Deaf ‘Magarotto’.
yesterday school magarotto ix1 friend talk done
‘Yesterday a friend of mine and I talked about the school Magarotto.’
In both sentences, no specific marker introduces the extra argument.
Another case of argument extension is called causativisation, by which a causer is added to the structure, resulting in a complex event having a causer and a caused event. An example is provided by the following sentence, where father is the causer of the event of breaking a fishing rod. The causer is encoded lexically by the handling classifier, which incorporates the change of state of the object.
father poss(G)1 fishing_rod ix3 CL(closed 5): ‘break_fishing_rod’
‘My father broke the fishing rod by snapping it.’
The resultant state yielded by the complex event may require further representation by an additional predicate, as in the example below, where another classifier (SASS) specifies the resultant state of the teared piece of paper.
childa paper ix3a CL(F): ‘tear_paper’ SASS(flat open L): ‘long_thin_object’
‘The child shreds a piece of paper.’
Finally, LIS has a specialized causative auxiliary, give_aux, to express a change of psychological state (SYNTAX 2.1.1.3), as shown in the examples below.
a. pea agive1_aux anger
‘That makes me angry.’
b. summer give1_aux glad
‘Summer makes me happy.’