A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

The sign reasonobligatorilyintroduces reason clauses in LIS. However, there is another way to express causality in LIS and this involves the underspecified interrogative sign q_artichoke discussed in SYNTAX 1.2.3.2 and illustrated in the following picture.

 

                   

         q_artichoke

 

The following is an example of a sentence expressing causation and involving q_artichoke.

 

 

 

         car CL(closed 5): ‘car_bump_and_stop’ q_artichoke engine_oil exhaust

         ‘Why did the car stop? Because the engine oil finished.’

 

However, the sign q_artichoke does not play the role of introducing a subordinate clause in this structure, which is more akin to a question-answer pair (‘Why did the car stop? Because the engine oil finished’).

         The sign glossed reason is very similar to the wh-sign corresponding to ‘why’, glossed as why. Note that the manual parameters are the same, however the two signs differ in terms of absence/presence of specific non-manuals. The sign reason introducing a reason clause is articulated with neutral facial expressions (a), whereas the sign interrogative pronoun why is obligatorily produced with the non-manuals typical of wh-questions (SYNTAX 1.2.3.1) (b).

 

                   

         a.            reason

         ‘Because’

 

                   

         b.            why

         ‘Why’

 

The reader should therefore be careful not to confuse the two signs. The following sentence shows the wh-sign why included in an interrogative sentence (‘Why did Maria leave the house?’) followed by the answer ‘to meet up with a friend’. That this sentence is a question-answer pair is indicated by the non-manual marking, namely lowered eye-brows (typical of wh-signs) spreading from the beginning to the sign why and raised eye-brows on the answer.

                                      

 

 

                                                      wh                     re

         maria house go_out why. friend meet

         ‘Why did Maria leave the house? To meet up with a friend.’

 

Conversely, the sign reason fucntions as a subordinating conjunction introducing a subordinate reason clause. As shown in the example below, it is not accompanied by any special non-manual marking.

 

 

 

         maria house go_out reason friend meet

         ‘Maria left the house to meet up with a friend.’