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).In this section, a list of definite determiners is presented (for the semanticopragmatic interpretations of the forms, see [PRAGMATICS 1]).
LSC has a definite particle, which is glossed as self because of the mouthing that it is co-articulated with (the corresponding Catalan word can be roughly translated as ‘same/itself’). self is a mono-manual sign articulated with a y-handshape and with body contact on the ipsilateral shoulder, with a downward movement, as shown below.
self sign
The sign self is related to a nominal element, in such a way that it either co-occurs with it or anaphorically substitutes it. It may function as a pronoun and as a determiner. The relation between the sign self and the nominal element is established through signing space. Because the sign is body-anchored, and thus cannot be localized in space, body lean and eye gaze are used to localize the co-occurring nominal sign.
Definiteness and familiarity may also be expressed non-manually. This particular non-manual consists of squinted eyes. Importantly, the shared information does not need to be explicitly mentioned in previous discourse, but it can perfectly be accommodated or be part of the general knowledge from the common ground. It is also worth mentioning that the non-manual marker squinted eyes indicates that the addressee may retrieve the discourse referent from memory in a long run and serves as a signal to indicate the low accessibility status of the linguistic material that it is aligned with.
Squinted eyes
Referring to a particular student that the conversation participants may identify, both (a) and (b) are instances of familiar discourse referents. In a sentence where the sign self is not overt, squinted eyes having scope over the noun phrase suffice to refer to a familiar discourse referent (b).
Context for (a) and (b): You tell your work colleague that today you have a tutorial with the LSC student you both met yesterday.
sq
a) today ix1 tutorial self person3 student language sign catalan.
‘Today I have a class-tutorial with the Catalan Sign Language student.’
sq
b) today ix1 tutorial person3 student language sign catalan.
‘Today I have a class-tutorial with the Catalan Sign Language student.’