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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Lingua. 2016 May 6;180:49–68. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2016.03.007

Table 2.

Reference categories and reference types.

Reference category Reference type
Nominal Bare noun
Fingerspelled (FS) nouna
Modified noun (IX noun; noun IX; noun CL; CL noun)
Pronominal Pronoun
Zero Anaphor Constructed action/dialogue (fixed spatial marking; mental rotation)
Plain verb
Agreement verb (fixed spatial marking; mental rotation)
Classifier SASSb
Semantic classifier
Handle classifier
a

Although there is no semantically based reason to distinguish between fingerspelled nouns and signed nouns, we expected that signers may avoid using fingerspelled nouns in maintained and reintroduced contexts simply because of the relatively greater effort required for fingerspelling compared to signing a noun.

b

In this category, we only counted SASSes that occurred independently of nouns, and that, though they were used to refer to entities, were not lexicalized.