This week, we’d like to present a paper not directly related to the research of the LABSS. It is a work from a colleague of ISTC, Elena Pizzuto from the research group on deafness and sign language.

The paper is Noun morphology in Italian Sign Language , co-authored with Serena Corazza, published on Lingua in 1996.

Abstract

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It has been reported that in at least some sign languages such as ASL, nominal signs possess little or no inflectional morphology. Previous analyses of Italian Sign Language (LIS), have shown that LIS nouns exhibit some inflectional properties, and these influence the behavior of verbs. Most of these data, however, were limited to one variety of LIS used in Palermo, Sicily.

The purpose of the present paper is twofold: (1) to provide new data on LIS nominal morphology, extending our analyses to other varieties of LIS used in such different Italian cities as Rome and Trieste, and thus assessing the generalizability of previous findings on the topic; (2) to explore whether there is any significant interaction between nominal morphology and classifier predicates. In order to achieve our objectives, we analyze and describe spontaneous and elicited productions of nominal signs, and judgements of grammatical acceptability given by native LIS signers over sentences containing different classes of nominal signs, in different contexts (with inflecting/or noninflecting verbs; with classifier-predicates). Examining our findings in a cross-linguistic perspective, we then attempt to clarify whether the data on LIS provide indications concerning the role of modality-specific vs. language-specific factors in shaping the lexicon and morphology of a particular sign language.

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Goodbye Elena, travel well.