A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

 

Aspectual markers are employed to indicate whether the event described by the predicate is complete (perfective aspect) or not (imperfective aspect).

            Perfective aspect in LIS is conveyed through the articulation of the sign done, which may encode both temporal (LEXICON 3.3.1) and aspectual information. When conveying perfective aspectual information, the sign done is related to lexical verbs by following them. In the following example, the sign done indicates that the action described by the verb was completed before the time of utterance.

 

 

 

            g-i-a-n-n-i house buy done 

            ‘Gianni has bought a house.’ (recreated from Zucchi et al., 2010: 199)

 

Since done acts as a marker of perfectivity, it can only occur with predicates describing events that have an ending point, thus conveying the meaning that the action has been completed and it is not an open process. For this reason, done cannot occur with stative predicates (such as stink) in that they describe a permanent state rather than an event that can be marked as completed.

            Moreover, done cannot occur with the sign not nor with the negative quantifiers nobody, nothing and never. To convey the meaning that the event described by the predicate has not been completed, LIS employs a simple sentential negation, the sign not in example (a), or a negative quantifier, the sign nothing in the example (b) (SYNTAX 1.5.1).

 

 

 

            a.         gianni house buy not

            ‘Gianni has not bought a house.’ (based on Zucchi et al., 2010: 214)                

 

 

 

            b.         g-i-a-n-n-i homework nothing

            ‘Gianni has not done his homework.’ (based on Zucchi et al., 2010: 212)

 

The negative counterpart of the completive aspectual marker done in LIS is the negative lexical sign not_yet (see MORPHOLOGY 3.5.2 and SYNTAX 1.5.1.1.1 for further details). The sign not_yet includes the presupposition that the event is expected to occur in the future.

 

            

            not_yet

 

In the example below, the sign not_yet indicates that Gianni has not done his homework yet, but he is going to do so in the future. 

 

 

 

            g-i-a-n-n-i homework not_yet

            ‘Gianni has not done his homework yet.’ (based on Zucchi et al., 2010: 212)

 

It is important to notice that done can also be used as lexically contentful main verb meaning ‘finish’. In these instances, it is produced in preverbal position, as in the example below.

 

 

 

            gianni cake done eat

            ‘Gianni has finished eating the cake.’ (based on Zucchi, 2009: 124)

 

In order to deliver the imperfective aspect, LIS employs lexical adverbials such as every_day (a), usually (b), always (c).

 

 

 

            a.         every_day child cry

            ‘The child cries every day.’

 

 

 

            b.         usually ix₁ sleep CL(V): ‘go_to_bed’ late

            ‘I usually go to bed late.’

 

 

 

            c.         child cry always

            ‘The child was always crying.’ (based on Bertone, 2011: 222)

 

Crucially, imperfective aspect can also be encoded morphologically, namely through modifications of the manual verb sign, whose articulation can be lengthened and repeated to convey that the event is an ongoing process of indefinite duration (MORPHOLOGY 3.3.1.1). For ease of explanation, we report here one example.

 

 

 

            child cry++

            ‘The child was always crying.’ (based on Bertone, 2011: 222)