Le labializzazioni su focus informativi e contrastivi nella LIS. Una marca pragmatica in comparazione con i gesti coverbali

This study aims to explore the occurrence of mouthings on information focus and contrastive focus in Italian Sign Language, showing that mouthings may be used as a focus marking strategy. Two elicitation tasks allowed us to compare the length of mouthings on focalised and non-focalised elements in the production of two Deaf native signers. Moreover, this measure was observed depending on the focus type and the syntactic role of the focalised DP. By adopting a cross-modal theoretical approach, this work provides evidence of a similar pragmatic function performed by coverbal gestures and mouthings in spoken and sign languages, respectively.