Mans enlaire i palmells amunt, això és un marcador discursiu!

Abstract

Summary: In this article, we present the first study on PALM-UP from the perspective of discourse markers in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). In the sample extracted from the LSC Corpus, we observed that PALM-UP is polyfunctional. It frequently expresses nonconnective purposes, that is, it is used to punctuate discourse or to participate in the exchange between signers. We have not found correspondences between the handshape of PALM-UP (one handed or two handed) and its functions. We have neither observed any combination of nonmanuals that allows us to distinguish one function from the other. This finding underlines the importance of context in order to assign a specific function to this discourse marker. Keywords: PALM-UP, discourse marker, functional description, handshape, nonmanuals