2.2.2.1. Initialization
Initialised signs display a fingerspelling handshape representing the first letter of the corresponding Italian word. There are quite a few initialised signs in the LIS lexicon, especially in two categories: days of the week and toponyms. For instance, the sign monday (Ita. lunedì) is realised with handshape L (a) and the sign for the Italian city Vicenza is realised with handshape V (b).
a. monday
b. vicenza
Frequent handshapes used in initialised signs in LIS are V, L, C, and D.
It is interesting to note that some initialised signs employ handshapes from the old manual alphabet (LEXICON 2.2.2). For example, we can find the old handshape T in a variant form of the sign taxi.
taxi
As an effect of diachronic change, old fingerspelled handshapes in initialised signs tend to be replaced by the corresponding new fingerspelled handshapes. For instance, the sign for Sunday (Ita. domenica) used to be articulated with the old D handshape, while nowadays the same sign is preferably produced with the new D handshape.
a. sunday (old sign)
(recreated from Radutzky, 2009: 33)
b. sunday (new sign)
(recreated from Radutzky, 2009: 33)
Most of initialised signs in LIS select the handshape corresponding to the first letter of the corresponding Italian word. However, there are a few special cases in which the handshape of the sign reproduces another letter, different from the first one. The signs wednesday (Ita. mercoledì) and ex (Ita. ex) are such cases. As for wednesday, the handshape reproduces the second letter of the Italian equivalent (E).
wednesday
The peculiar choice of reproducing a non-first letter is well motivated. On the one hand, the sign for Wednesday needs to overcome a conflict with another day of the week. The initialised signs tuesday and wednesday, both derived by Italian words starting with M (martedì and mercoledì, respectively), need to select different letters to avoid possible misunderstandings: so, Tuesday reproduces the first letter of the Italian equivalent (M), while wednesday reproduces the second one (E). For ease of comparison, the sign tuesday is provided below.
tuesday
The sign ex is another special case because it is articulated with the old handshape X, corresponding to the second (and last) letter of the Italian equivalent.
ex
The selection of X is probably motivated by the choice to highlight the letter with the highest visual impact.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant Agreement No 693349.