A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

The unmarked SOV order of subject, object and verb observed in SYNTAX 2.3.1.1 is shared by both agreeing verbs (a) and plain verbs (b) in LIS.

 

 

 

         a.            ix₁ story ₁tell₂

         ‘I tell you a story.’

 

 

 

         b.            cat red meat eat

         ‘The red cat eats meat.’

 

Although sharing the same word order, sentences with agreeing verbs and plain verbs may differ in the frequency of the SVO order. More specifically, with plain reversible verbs where both arguments may be promoted to be the sentence subject, the SVO order is also attested probably to avoid ambiguity in the interpretation of the syntactic roles of the predicate arguments, as shown in (a) and (b) below.

 

         a.            anna laura think

         ‘Anna thinks of Laura.’

 

         b.            anna think laura

         ‘Anna thinks of Laura.’

 

In the case of some ditransitive verbs, where a locative constituent is involved, the order of the arguments in the sentence can be peculiar, since the locative constituent is in pre-verbal position. An example is provided by the spatial ditransitive verb CL(flat open 5): ‘put_book_on_shelf’, where the locative argument follows the object and precedes the verb.

 

 

 

         teacher book shelf++ CL(flat open 5): ‘put_book_on_shelf’

         ‘The teacher puts the book on one of the shelves.’