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Relativization is a robust subordinating type across languages, displaying important typological variability concerning the position of the nominal head that the relative clause modifies, and sign languages are no exception. It has been widely assumed since Keenan & Comrie (1977) that the subject position is more accessible to relativization than object and oblique positions. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the extension of this famous generalization both across modalities (sign as opposed to spoken languages) and across relativization typologies (internally as opposed to externally headed relatives), and to verify how it interacts with age of first language exposure. We here report the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task assessing the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses (RCs) in three sign languages: French Sign Language (LSF), Catalan Sign Language (LSC), and Italian Sign Language (LIS). The results are that object RCs are never easier to comprehend than subject RCs. Remarkably, this is independent from the type of relative clause (internally or externally headed). As for the impact of age of exposure, we found that native signers outperform non-native signers and that a delay in language exposure emphasizes the subject/object asymmetry. Our results introduce a new potential diagnostic for LF movement: the existence of a Subject Advantage in comprehension can be used as a reliable and measurable cue for the existence of long-distance dependencies, including covert ones.

In spoken languages, focus (i) is normally realized by phonological prominence, which in English is effected by higher pitch, greater loudness and longer duration (e.g. Katz and Selkirk 2011). Semantically, it (ii) signals the activation of alternatives (e.g. Rooth 1996), and (iii) it has diverse effects, ranging from contrastive (as in (1)a) to exhaustive (as in (1)b). 1(1) a. I'll introduce John to Mary, and then I'll introduce BILL to her.b. If you invite John OR Mary, the party will be a success. => no inference that the party will be a success if the addressee invites John AND MaryFinally, it has been speculated that (iv) the realization of focus is driven by a biological 'effort code' whereby greater pitch excursions (and thus greater effort on the speaker's part) are associated with greater emphasis/importance; (Gussenshoven 2001(Gussenshoven , 2004). 2 Following Wilbur 2012, as well as Crasborn and van der Kooij 2013 and Kimmelman 2014, we argue that versions of all four properties hold of ASL and LSF focus, which suggests that focus has a unified semantics and to some extent a unified semantics/phonology interface across modalities; in particular, contrastive and exhaustive focus can be realized by the same prosodic means. Earlier studies emphasized the diversity of focus realization in ASL, and the importance of syntactic movement (Wilbur 2012), which made it hard to isolate the role of prosody. By contrast, detailed production studies of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) and Russian Sign Language (RSL) displayed in situ strategies of (corrective and informational) focus marking involving modulations of sign speed, size and duration, combined with non-manual markers in NGT (Crasborn and van der Kooij 2013;

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