The syntax of noun modification in Italian Sign Language (LIS).

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 described hereafter: non-manual markers and the pointing sign. Non-manual markers consist in various facial expressions, head and shoulder movements, mouthing, and similar markers that are added to the hand signs to create meaning. Their role in syntax can be compared to the role of suprasegmental features. As suprasegmentals do in many oral languages, non-manual markers may indicate whether a sentence is a question, a command, or a statement. They can give emphasis, contrast or focus. Moreover, in LIS, their role in sentence is fundamental because they substitute other linguistic elements not encoded by functional manual signs (for example some modification or the verb to be when it is a copula). The pointing sign is a linguistic means to distinguish a specific referent, it has regular distribution in the sentence, and it has a specific grammatical function. It is different from a pointing gesture, which can also accompany deictic word in oral language, and it can overlap with it. Pointing signs can be demonstratives and pronouns, they encode the space features of proximality to or distality from the speaker and the addressee that are fundamental for the interpretation of the referent. Space features assign referential meaning to the pointed space that can result in morphological agreement with some verbs. Section 2 will distinguish nominal and verbal constituents in LIS. Section 3 will observe that normally in LIS adjective agreement is not obligatory, instead we can speak of “assimilation”, in the sense pointed out by Mac Laughlin for ASL (1997:206), and the adjective agreement is overt only when the adjectives are pronominal forms of the noun. Section 4 reports on attributive and predicative adjectives that are distinguished by means of suprasegmental features. Section 5 regards direct modification and its development in compound nouns. Section 6 shows distributional property of direct modifier. In section 7 I explain the structure of direct and indirect modification.