A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Manual marking refers to the morphological processes modifying the articulation of the nominal signs in order to convey plurality. In general, morphological modifications are displayed by signs belonging to the class of inflectional nouns. In LIS we find four main processes, which are described and exemplified below.

i) Reduplication with dislocation: the movement of the sign for the noun is repeated and displaced within the signing space. This is exemplified by the sign house, whose citation form is shown in (a). To convey plurality, the sign is reduplicated and dislocated within the signing space (b).

 

 

 

         a.            house

 

 

 

         b.            house++_ipsi

         ‘Houses’

 

The same holds for one-handed signs such as child (a), whose plural form derived through reduplication with dislocation is provided in (b).

 

 

 

         a.            child

 

 

 

         b.            child++_ipsi

         ‘Children’ (based on Bertone, 2011: 99)

 

ii) Simultaneous reduplication by the non-dominant hand: one-handed signs can be articulated as two-handed signs in order to convey plurality. This is illustrated with the sign person (a), which conveys numerosity by being articulated as a two-handed sign (b).

 

 

 

         a.       person                                                                

        

 

 

         b.            dom:    person++

                        n-dom: person++

         ‘People’

 

Interestingly, the sign child can convey plurality by means of this morphological process as well, as illustrated below.

 

 

 

         dom:      child++

         n-dom:   child++

         ‘Children’ (based on Bertone, 2011: 99)

 

iii) Reduplication without dislocation: plurality is conveyed by reduplicating the movement of the sign, which however does not change position within the signing space. To illustrate, the sign hour in its citation form (a) displays one single movement. In order to convey the plural, the sign can be reduplicated an indefinite number of times (b).

 

 

 

          a.             hour                                                  

        

 

 

         b.            hour++

         ‘Hours’

 

iv) Sideward movement without reduplication. This strategy is attested for the sign child, which can incorporate a sideward movement without being reduplicated to convey the meaning ‘children’, as shown below.

 

 

 

         child_ipsi

         ‘Children’ (based on Bertone, 2011: 99)

 

However, there are some signs that cannot show overt morphological marking to convey plurality despite being articulated in the neutral space. These are: key, scissors, pen, plumber, salami, paint_brush. These nouns cannot be reduplicated to convey information of numerosity because they are phonologically homophonous to the correspondent verb signs in all parameters but movement. Therefore, reduplication of this signs actually conveys a verbal meaning rather than plurality. We see a couple of examples below. In its citation form, the sign scissors is articulated as in (a). The reduplication of the sign in the signing space results in the verb cut_with_scissors (b).

 

 

 

         a.            scissors

 

 

 

         b.            scissors cut_with_scissors         

         ‘(To) cut with scissors.’

 

The sign key is articulated in its citation form as in (a). When reduplicated in the signing space, the sign conveys the meaning ‘lock several doors’ (b).

 

 

 

         a.            key

 

 

 

         b.            lock++         

         ‘(To) lock several doors.’

 

Therefore, these nouns employ numerals, quantifiers or classifiers to carry plurality features, as it happens for most of the nouns articulated on the signer’s body. See in example (a) below the plural form of the sign key conveyed through the quantifier many, and in (b) the plural form of the sign scissors conveyed through reduplication of the dedicated entity classifier.

 

 

 

         a.        key many

         ‘Many keys’

 

 

 

         b.      scissors CL(V): ‘scissors_be_located’++_ipsi

         ‘Many scissors’