This paper explores typological, presumably modality-specific features affecting deixis and
anaphora in signed languages. Simplifying greatly for the sake of the present
exposition, we define deictic-anaphoric structures as text cohesion devices which allow speakers or
signers to introduce referents in discourse (deixis) and, subsequently, to refer back to them at later
instants in time (anaphora) (Lyons, 1977; Lombardi Vallauri [2007], for a recent overview).