A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Since gradable adjectives can vary in degree, they can enter degree comparative constructions (SYNTAX 3.6). Before going into details, it is important to make a distinction between two classes of gradable adjectives. Some of them are SASS (MORPHOLOGY 5.2) and represent the degree of the property iconically: for example, the adjective tall maps height onto the signing space. The higher the extended arm, the higher the referred entity.

 

                   

         tall

 

Other adjectives cannot encode this information iconically. For instance, the articulation of the adjective intelligent cannot map the degree of smartness onto the signing space.

 

                   

         intelligent

 

The distinction between these two adjectival classes is relevant to the realisation of degree comparatives. Gradable adjectives with iconic mapping (like tall) allow two strategies: an analytic form that consists in the articulation of the lexical comparative marker more (a) or a synthetic form in which the adjective incorporates a morpheme expressing the degree iconically (here glossed as iconic_more) (b).

 

                      

         a.            more

         (based on Aristodemo & Geraci, 2018: 691)

 

                      

         b.            tall.iconic_more

         ‘Taller’ (based on Aristodemo & Geraci, 2018: 691)

 

For more details on comparative constructions, see SYNTAX 3.6.

         Note that the comparative marker more included in the analytic construction may occur with some variant forms. As for the synthetic construction, iconic_more maps degree onto the signing space: a set of ordered points in space (the starting and end point of the sign) corresponds to a set of ordered degrees. The more distant the points, the more distant the degrees. To illustrate, we show below how the articulation of tall.iconic_more iconically changes on the basis of the difference compared: supposing that a man is 1 metre 80, the woman in (a) is 1 metre 82 and the woman in (b) is 1 metre 99.

 

                   

         a.            a_bit.tall.iconic_more

         ‘A bit taller than’

 

                   

         b.            a_lot.tall.iconic_more

         ‘A lot taller than’

 

Because of their nature, gradable adjectives without iconic mapping (like intelligent) cannot resort to the synthetic form to express degree comparatives. The only possibility is to combine the adjective with the lexical marker more.