A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

A proper noun is typically used to refer to a specific person, place, or thing. This category includes name signs, i.e. signs used to identify sign language users or famous people, and toponyms, i.e. signs referring to places, brand names, etc. In LIS, proper nouns either have an iconic origin or are influenced by Italian words.

            Proper nouns with an iconic origin, also called descriptive, have a direct relation to a physical characteristic of the referent, like crooked nose, long hair, and so on. An example is the name sign referring to someone with voluminous and long hair.

 

 

 

            anna

 

Sometimes name signs refer to a behavioural characteristic, or they can describe the job or role in society. For instance, the name sign for a person that smiles a lot could be the one illustrated below.

 

 

 

            elena

           

In some circumstances, they can also refer to a particular event in the life of a person. For example, someone might be identified by a name sign alluding to a scar that person got when s/he was a child.

 

 

 

            mirko

 

Sometimes name signs can have a patronymic origin: they can be the same of the parents and, in this case, they lose their original transparency.

Name signs can also be inherited from homonymous people who, for various reasons, are no longer in the community where the name sign developed. This happens especially in the schools for the Deaf where students leave the school every year.

            Moreover, there are name signs that have an iconographic origin: they refer to the characteristics of the representation of the saint with that name. So, pietro (Eng. ‘Peter’) is signed with the sign for ‘key’ because in the Christian tradition Saint Peter has the keys of the paradise. paolo (Eng. ‘Paul’) is signed with the sign that indicates a beheading, the kind of death Saint Paul suffered. In these cases, the name sign of the saint may be attributed to a class of persons with the same first name. As in in Deaf schools, where the name sign can be inherited from another person, the name sign loses transparency and becomes opaque.

            Some name signs are influenced by Italian (LEXICON 2.2). For example, there are name signs that are the representation, by fingerspelling, of the first letter of the name or the surname of the person, like m for marco (LEXICON 2.2.2.1). Other name signs use the letters that are visually more salient, like n-n for anna (LEXICON 2.2.2.2). The name sign of Virginia Volterra, one of the linguists who initiated the linguistic studies on LIS (SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 3.2), combines the first letters of the name and surname, with a physical characteristic (thinness) represented by the movement.

 

 

 

            virginia_volterra

 

In other cases, the name signs are a translation of the name or the surname of the person (LEXICON 2.2.1). For example, a person with the surname Rossi (that means ‘red’) could be given the name sign red, or a person with the name Angelo (that means ‘angel’) could be given the name sign angel.

            Other name signs are the re-interpretation of Italian words. For example, a person with the surname Giovannoni could be given the name sign young, because the first part of her/his surname, is similar to the word giovane, ‘young’.

            The same phenomenon applies to toponyms. An interesting example is the sign for Turin, a city in the north of Italy, which is the same sign used for the animal bull because the first part of the word (Torino) is similar to the Italian word for ‘bull’, namely toro.

 

 

 

            turin

 

Alternatively, signs identifying cities have a direct relation to a monument or something important in that city. For example, milan is signed in a way that indicates the spiers of its famous cathedral.

 

 

 

            milan

 

Proper nouns are also used to identify brands and companies, as can be seen in the following examples. In all of them, the proper noun iconically derives from the logo of the company. These name signs can either be created among LIS signers, or be borrowed from other sign languages (LEXICON 2.1).

 

 

 

            a.         nike

 

 

 

            b.         mcdonald’s

 

 

 

            c.         mercedes

 

 

 

            d.         peugeot