Strategies of Relativization in Italian Sign Language

We discuss a construction of Italian Sign Language (LIS) that we call PROREL clauses. This construction is used to translate Italian relative clauses by native signers of Italian Sign Language. We show, however, that it differs from Italian relative clauses both syntactically and semantically. From a syntactic standpoint, we argue that PROREL clauses are correlative constructions on a par with left-adjoined relative clauses investigated for Hindi by Dayal (1996). On the semantic side, we argue however that, unlike Hindi correlatives, PROREL clauses lack restrictive interpretations and are interpreted instead as subject-predicate structures. In this respect, they are similar to Japanese internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs) investigated by Shimoyama (1999). We propose that, like Japanese IHRCs in Shimoyama’s proposal, PROREL clauses are related to the main clause via e-type anaphora.