What's the point? Examining indices in American Sign Language nominals

Abstract

In American Sign Language, nominal phrases contain various pointing signs, referred to as 'indices', which establish specific referential loci in the signing space. These indices can occur pre- and/or post-nominally or can function as an independent pronoun. Traditionally, these indices have been treated as separate lexical items, but I argue that they are instead realizations of the same functional category, namely idx. Here, I extend part of an analysis of Washo nominal phrases (Hanink 2021) to nominals in ASL.