The Syntax of Predicate Ellipsis in Italian Sign Language (LIS (original) (raw)

The syntax of noun modification in Italian Sign language (LIS)

2009

In this paper I will discuss noun modification in LIS. Before starting the discussion some clarification is at stake. The grammatical categories of Italian Sign Language (LIS) are not morphologically distinguished: nouns, verbs or adjectives have the same lexical form. How can words of LIS be categorized in different classes? At first glance it seams that there are no distinctions in LIS. In recent syntactic literature, the noun phrase has been analysed as having a structure similar to clausal structure (Abney 1987; Bernstein 1991, 2001; Cinque 1994; 2000; Giusti 1993, 1996, 2002). This leads us to the prediction that in LIS a phrase is initially indistinguishable if verbal or nominal. In the next section I try to delineate the principal facts that signal if a word functions as a noun, an adjective or a verb. I will claim that the presence of a determiner is a means to distinguish a nominal constituent. In this introductive part I introduce two key factors to interpret the phenomena...

The syntax of nominal modification in Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Sign Language and Linguistics, 2017

In this paper, we investigate structural aspects of nominal modification in Italian Sign Language (LIS), a language with a relatively flexible word order. In order to tackle the issue, this study combines different approaches, including generalizations from typological universals on word order, their formal counterparts, and a variationist approach to language facts. Data come from the largest corpus of LIS currently available. Despite the absence of categorical rules, our mixed approach shows that LIS data are consistent with the general tenets of nominal modification. Results from the statistical analysis indicate that the attested language-internal variability is constrained both by linguistic and social factors. Specifically, a fine-grained structure of nominal modification is able to capture the internal variability of LIS. Processing effects, age, gender, and early exposure to the language also play a relevant role in determining order preferences.

Ellipsis in Finnish Sign Language

This paper deals with syntactic ellipsis in clauses in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). The point of departure for the paper is the observation, confirmed by several studies, that clauses in FinSL are often syntactically incomplete. Building on this, the paper first describes how all core-internal clausal material may be elided in FinSL: core arguments in clauses with a verbal nucleus, core-internal NPs in clauses with a nominal nucleus, and even nuclei themselves. The paper then discusses several grammatical contexts which especially favor ellipsis in FinSL. These are question- answer pairs, two-clause coordinated structures, topic-comment structures, blend structures, and structures containing gesturally indicating Type 2 verbals. Finally, the paper argues that FinSL conforms to the main characteristics of a discourse-oriented language, and that FinSL clauses are not highly governed units syntactically.