A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Despite the relatively flexible word order position in LIS, basic word order represents a useful tool in the analysis of subject and object grammatical functions. The unmarked word order in the varieties of LIS under consideration is SOV, namely subject-object-verb (SYNTAX 2.3).

         However, variations in the basic word order are possible in LIS, for example in a topicalisation the object can be moved in front of the subject OSV (PRAGMATICS 4.2). In this case, the topicalised constituent is more likely to be accompanied by specific non-manuals, such as brow raise, squint eyes and head forward, and is more likely to be separated from the remaining part of the sentence by prosodic markers as head nod and an eye blink (glossed ‘top’ in the example below).

 

 

 

                 top

         house_a gianni_{b  3b}buy_3a

         ‘The house, Gianni buys it.’

 

Furthermore, the topicalisation of the object demonstrates that the grammatical functions of subject and object can also be distinguished from the pragmatic relationships like topic or focus. Although it is common for the subject to be the topic, the previous example shows that the object (house) can be the topic of the sentence.

         If the subject is a pronoun, it may appear in postverbal position (LEXICON 3.7; SYNTAX 2.2.1.3), as shown in the example below displaying an OVS order with a topicalised object.

 

 

 

                top

         book_{a 3a}buy_3b ix_3b

         ‘The book, it was bought by him.’

 

Agreement verbs and aspectual marking, plus the use of classifiers, may permit to place the object before the subject, without triggering any specific non-manual markers (LEXICON 3.3.2; MORPHOLOGY 3.3).

         Subject and object are not only identifiable by their position in basic word order, they also differ hierarchically, namely the object forms a unit with the verb (called verb phrase or VP) that excludes the subject. Evidence that verb plus object form a unit that excludes the subject comes from several syntactic phenomena. One of these phenomena is again topicalization, which proves that the entire VP can be displaced to a position in front of the subject, as shown in the example below.

 

 

 

                            top

         book_a read_a gianni_b like

         ‘Reading the book, Gianni likes it.’

 

A further piece of evidence for VP being a constituent comes from negation. In LIS, negation is generally produced through negative manual signs and non-manual markers spreading over them (SYNTAX 3.5). However, in some areas (especially in the central and south regions of Italy) it is possible to negate a sentence only through the negative non-manual markers. In the absence of a manual negative marker, the negative non-manuals (headshake) must spread over the entire VP composed of verb and object, and not only over a subpart of it. This indicates that the argument over which the neg non-manuals spread is the object. The example below demonstrates this condition.

 

 

 

                                         neg

         gianni chocolate eat

         ‘Gianni does not eat chocolate.’

 

The indivisibility of verb and object is also attested in the case of the insertion of adverbs. Although these adverbs have quite flexible positions, they cannot break up the VP constituent. And they can only appear before or after it, as shown in (a) and (b) below.

 

 

 

         a.            gianni yesterday apple eat

         ‘Gianni, yesterday, ate an apple.’

 

 

 

         b.            gianni apple eat yesterday

         ‘Gianni ate an apple, yesterday.’