Chapter 3

The basic units of LIS

The chapter begins by focusing on the Sign languages representation, describing, in particular, the system called SignWriting, adopted in this book. The sublexical units of LIS are described from an articulatory perspective. The fundamental components of the language are presented: manual components (handshape, orientation, location and movement) and components traditionally categorized as non-manual (facial expression, mouth actions, movement of the torso and gaze direction). In the second part of the chapter, deictic, lexical and transfer units of meaning, are described as well as the strategies that contribute to their formation in the light of three mechanisms of signification: pointing, describing and depicting.