A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

LIS displays more than one type of relative clauses. It has both what we shall call full relative clauses and free relative clauses.

         In LIS full relative clauses, the head noun (always in bold in the examples) is produced inside the relative clause (always within brackets in the examples) according to its syntactic role. In the following example, the head noun child is the subject of the relative clause predicate eat, it is marked by specific non-manuals (glossed ‘rel’) marking relative clauses in LIS (SYNTAX 3.4.6) and it follows the time adverbial yesterday modifying the predicate of the relative clause. Time adverbials always mark the beginning of a clause in LIS (SYNTAX 2.3.1.2). The entire relative clause is marked by specific non-manuals (glossed ‘rel’). Optionally, the main clause (today stomach_ache in the following example) can contain a pronominal sign (ix₃) co-referent with the head noun in the relative clause (co-reference between elements in a sentence is signalled in the examples by the presence of the same indexing).

                                                                      rel

         [yesterday child++_a cake eat pe_a] today (ix_3a) stomach_ache

         ‘The children that yesterday ate the cake today have stomach ache.’

In the example below, the head noun dog is produced inside the relative clause in object position.

                                                      rel

         [p-a-o-l-o dog_a find pe_a] l-u-c-a CL(flat open 4): ‘wash_dog’

         ‘Luca washes the dog that Paolo found.’         

As opposed to full relative clauses, LIS free relative clauses do not display a head noun modified by the relative clause. In its place, the relative clause displays a wh-sign phonologically homophonous to wh-signs in LIS wh-questions (LEXICON 3.7.5). The wh-sign is produced inside the relative clause and it is marked by the non-manual markings (rel) spreading over the relative clause.

                                      rel

         [exam done who] go_out be_able

         ‘Who has taken the exam can go out.’ (recreated from Branchini, 2009: 104)