How to recognise a sentence when you see one

This introduction outlines the general theme of this issue of Sign Language & Linguistics: the identification of sentences and sentence boundaries in signed languages. First, several definitions of and perspectives on the unit ‘sentence’ stemming from the linguistic literature are discussed. Secondly, some of the problems with applying these ideas to signed languages will be discussed, as well as different methodological means of establishing a sentence unit in signed language data. Finally, the contributions in this volume are introduced in the light of this linguistic context.