A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Conative aspect is a type of imperfective aspect which refers to the unfinished status of an event that was about to start. LIS can encode conative aspect morphologically, by modifying the articulation of the verb. To illustrate, compare the articulation of the verb fight in (a), with the articulation in (b), which displays morphological modifications to encode conative aspect, glossed fight.con.

         a.            ix₁ ix₃ friend ix₁₊₃ fight

         ‘I had a fight with my friend.’

         Context: You are having a drink with your girlfriend at the bar. A man hits you, and the two of you start arguing. You are about to have a fight when your girlfriend asks you to leave.

         b.             dom:    man ix_a                 ix_{1 1}communicate_{3a 1}fight.con_3a girlfriend _3bask₁ neg_o

                         n-dom:           ₃CL(G): ‘move’₁

         ‘A man hit me. We started arguing and we were about to have a fight when my girlfriend called me, thus we did not fight.’

As example (b) clearly shows, conative aspect can be realised in LIS by interrupting the articulation of the verb, which displays a reduced and unfinished movement.