A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Tense inflection refers to the morphological processes able to modify the articulation of the verb sign in order to convey temporal information about the event.

         LIS realises tense inflection by changing the position of the shoulders during the articulation of the verb sign: when the shoulders are aligned with the rest of the body, the action is taking place at the time of utterance (a); if the shoulders are tilted backwards, the action took place before the time of utterance, namely in the past (b); if the shoulders are tilted forward, the predicate defines a future event which will take place after the time of utterance (c). Therefore, tense inflection in LIS can be conveyed non-manually and, when it does, it displays the visual metaphor of the ‘time as a line’. It is important to notice that the possibility of inflecting the verb to carry temporal information is restricted to the variety of LIS used in the Napoli-Salerno area.

 

 

 

                                               shoulders-straight

         a.       g-i-a-n-n-i house buy

         ‘Gianni is buying a house.’ (recreated from Zucchi, 2009: 101)

 

 

 

                                            shoulders-backward

         b.       g-i-a-n-n-i house buy

         ‘Gianni bought a house.’ (recreated from Zucchi, 2009: 101)

 

 

 

                                            shoulders-forward

         c.       g-i-a-n-n-i house buy

         ‘Gianni will buy a house.' (recreated from Zucchi, 2009: 101)

 

When the sentence contains past and future temporal adverbials as independent lexical signs, non-manual inflection on the verb is absent, because tense in conveyed through the temporal adverbial.

 

 

 

         past g-i-a-n-n-i house buy

         ‘Some time ago Gianni bought a house.’ (based on Zucchi, 2009: 103)