Expressing surprise and surprise-disapproval in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Some preliminary observations

I present here some observations on the expressions of surprise and surprise/disapproval in Italian Sign Language (LIS). I will compare Italian and LIS, in order to explore the role of multimodality and multilinearity in grammar devoting particular attention to gesture. The constructions under discussion are realized in Italian with a peculiar prosodic contour and gestural pattern, which, as shown by Giorgi and Dal Farra (2019) and Dal Farra, Giorgi and Hinterhölzl (forthcoming), turn out to be aligned. From an empirical point of view, the authors found a correlation between the distribution of the emphatic pitches in the prosodic component, and the stroke of the hand gesture and head nod. The stroke of the gesture is synchronized with the main accent of the gesture accompanying utterance. I show that in LIS it is possible to find a characteristic intonational pattern – i.e., a gestural pattern, with manual and non-manual components (see also Goldwin-Meadow and Brentari, 2017) - which can be compared with the one associated to these constructions in oral languages. That special questions in LIS have a peculiar intonation as well. They seem also to have peculiar gestural patterns, resembling in some way the one of oral languages. However, further work is required.