A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Considering movement modification without a switch of the articulatory joint, we present a couple of LIS examples, one involving reduction and the other extension.

            Movement reduction can be observed in some cases of plural reduplication morphology (MORPHOLOGY 4.1). Some nouns articulated in the neutral space can be pluralized by repeating the sign at differ points in space. To illustrate, we show below the sign city as well as its plural form city++.

            a.         city

            ‘City’ (based on Volterra, 2004: 187)

            b.         city++

            ‘Cities’ (based on Volterra, 2004: 188)

The sign city is articulated with a downward path movement realised at the elbow joint. The pluralized form, city++, requires this movement to be repeated at different points in the neutral space. As a result, the movement of the sign is still realised at the elbow joint, but it is phonologically reduced.

            Movement extension can be found in pointing signs. Consider, for example, pointing signs expressing locative information, such as (a). If the signer wants to point toward a specific locus at the periphery of the signing space, the pointing sign must be articulated with movement extension, as in (b).

            a.         ix(loc)

            ‘There’

            b.         ix(loc)_[distal]

            ‘Over there’