A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Although some variability can be found, the most frequent position for quantifiers in LIS is after the noun. Below, we can see some examples showing the postnominal distribution of these nominal modifiers: the universal quantifier all (a), the distributive quantifier each (b), the existential quantifier many (c), and the negative quantifier nobody (d) follow the noun they quantify.

 

 

 

         a.            person++ all origin sicily

         ‘All the people come from Sicily.’

 

 

 

         b.            student each video receive done

         ‘Each student received the video.’

 

 

 

                                                                     neg

         c.            today student many come not

         ‘Today lots of students did not come.’

 

 

 

                                                              neg

         d.            exam pass student nobody

         ‘No student passed the exam.’

 

In contrast to the other quantifiers, there is a preference for producing the negative quantifier nobody together with the modified noun in sentence-final position.

         If a quantifier co-occurs with other nominal modifiers, such as adjectives and possessives, it tends to appear at the end of the nominal expression. In the examples below, we can see that the quantifier all(unspread 5), a variant of all(G) (LEXICON 3.10.2), follows the noun and the possessive in (a) and follows the noun and the adjective in (b).

 

 

 

         a.            computer poss₁ all(unspread 5) break

         ‘All my computers are broken.’

 

 

 

                                                                                  neg

         b.            pen red all(unspread 5) function not

         ‘All the red pens do not work.’