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Acknowledgements; List of figures; Notational conventions; Sign language acronyms; General Introduction; Part I: Introducing Italian Sign Language (LIS); 1 Italian Sign Language and the Italian Deaf community; 1.1 Historical background; 1.2 The Italian Deaf community today; 1.3 Linguistic research on LIS; 2 A syntactic outline of Italian Sign Language (LIS); Introduction; 2.1 Modality-specific characteristics; 2.1.1 The internal structure of signs; 2.1.2 The linguistic use of space and movement; 2.1.2.1 Verb agreement; 2.1.2.2 Space and referentiality; 2.1.3 The non-manual component.

2.2 Representing LIS syntactic structure2.2.1 The CP layer; 2.2.1.1 Interrogative pronouns; 2.2.1.2 Relative pronouns; 2.2.1.3 Representing the CP layer; 2.2.2 The IP layer; 2.2.3 The VP layer; 2.2.4 The Determiner Phrase (DP); 2.2.4.1 Identifying D heads in LIS; 2.2.4.2 Distribution of D-like elements in the sentence; 2.2.4.3. Reduplication of D heads; 2.2.4.4 Naked NPs; 2.2.4.5 Heavy NPs; 2.2.4.6 Summing up LIS DP; 2.2.5 A structure; 2.3 Introducing relative and cleft constructions in LIS: the challenges; 2.4. Summary; Part II: On Relativization.

3 Relativization strategies in spoken languagesIntroduction; 3.1 Defining relativization; 3.2. The relative option: some constitutive elements; 3.3 Syntactic typologies across languages; 3.3.1 Internally Headed Relative Clauses (IHRCs); 3.3.2 Externally Headed Relative Clauses (EHRCs); 3.3.3 Free Relatives (FRs); 3.3.4 Correlative clauses; 3.3.5 Summing up the properties displayed by the main syntactic typologies; 3.4 Three semantic interpretations of relative clauses; 3.4.1 Restrictive relative clauses; 3.4.1.1 Antecedent-related properties.

3.4.1.2 Relative pronouns and pied-piping phenomena3.4.1.3 Scope phenomena; 3.4.1.4 Reconstruction and binding phenomena; 3.4.1.5 Extraposition; 3.4.1.6 Stacking; 3.4.1.7 Other properties; 3.4.1.8 Summing up; 3.4.2 Non-restrictive relative clauses; 3.4.2.1 Head-related properties; 3.4.2.2 Relative pronouns and pied-piping phenomena; 3.4.2.3 Scope phenomena; 3.4.2.4 Reconstruction and binding phenomena; 3.4.2.5 Extraposition; 3.4.2.6 Stacking; 3.4.2.7 Other properties; 3.4.2.8 Summing up; 3.4.3 Maximalizing relative clauses: Grosu and Landman's (1998) semantic scale.

3.4.4 Summing up the syntactic properties exhibited by restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses3.5 The syntactic representation of relative constructions; 3.5.1 The raising analysis; 3.5.1.1 Internally headed relative clauses; 3.5.1.2 Externally headed relative clauses; 3.5.1.3 Free relatives; 3.5.1.4. Correlative clauses; 3.5.1.5 Representing the semantic interpretation of relative structures; 3.6 Summary; 4 Relative clauses in sign languages: A typological survey; Introduction; 4.1 Relative constructions in American Sign Language (ASL).

4.2 Relative constructions in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS).

This work is a contribution to our understanding of relativization strategies and clefting in Italian Sign Language, and more broadly, to our understanding of these constructions in world languages by setting the discussion on the theories that have been proposed in the literature of spoken languages to derive the syntactic phenomena object of investigation.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

In English.

Open Access EbpS