A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Sign language classifiers are morphological categories which denote both animate and inanimate entities by depicting one or more salient properties by means of dedicated handshapes. Specifically, entities are classified considering their visual-geometric characteristics, the abstract semantic category, their handling or manipulation. Classifiers belong to the non-core lexicon of sign languages in that their form is visually motivated considering the external properties of referents, and they can display modifications in configuration which correspond to changes in meaning (LEXICON 1.2.1). Despite being iconic, classifiers are semantically underspecified since they denote entities considering one specific property. In so doing, they represent classes of referents and the same handshape can refer to different entities which are, however, sharing some properties.

         Classifiers in LIS can appear in nominal domains following the nominal sign for the referent and functioning as proforms. The overt realisation of the lexical sign for the referent seems to be optional in spontaneous sign discourse in LIS. Being pronominal elements, they can be used as morphological devices with all types of nouns, allowing i) to trace back to the referent within the discourse (PRAGMATICS 2.2.2); ii) to locate invariable nouns (LEXICON 3.1) within the signing space in order to realise agreement.   

         As introduced in (MORPHOLOGY 4.1), body-anchored nouns and nouns displaying complex movement cannot be modified to carry numeral inflection or to convey agreement. Therefore, they are followed by a classifier which can be displaced in space to realise agreement or be inflected for number. In example (a) below, we see that the reduplication of the classifier for book conveys both information of number and location by being reduplicated within the signing space; in (b), instead, the entity classifier functions as a pronoun for the sign shoe and it is employed to realise agreement with the modifiers, which are articulated in the same locus dedicated to the classifier.

         a.       table book CL(unspread 5): ‘book_be_located’++

         ‘There are several books on the table.’

         b.      dom:    shoe SASS(curved open 5): ‘pointed_toe’_a area_a colour pink

                  n-dom: shoe CL(unspread 5): ‘shoe’_a        

         ‘A pink shoe with pointed toe.’

LIS classifiers combine with verbal roots of motion, handling or location resulting in constructions called predicate classifiers, which indicate how the referent (denoted by the handshape) moves through space, how and where it is located, and/or how it is handled. In LIS, as in other sign languages, we detect three main categories of predicate classifiers: entity classifiers (MORPHOLOGY 5.1.1), bodypart classifiers (MORPHOLOGY 5.1.2), handle classifiers (MORPHOLOGY 5.1.3). Size-and-Shape Specifiers (SASS) (MORPHOLOGY 5.2) constitute a distinct category since they include classifiers occurring in nominal domains conveying information about the external properties of the referent, such as its size and shape, thus functioning as adjectives.

         We explore the handshapes detected in LIS for each semantic category of classifiers in the following sections.