evaluative morphology in italian sign...
TRANSCRIPT
Corso di Laurea Magistrale (ordinamento
ex D.M. 270/2004)
in Scienze del Linguaggio
Tesi di Laurea
Evaluative Morphology
in Italian Sign Language
Relatore
Ch.ma Prof.ssa Chiara Branchini
Correlatore
Ch.mo Prof. Guglielmo Cinque
Laureanda
Elena Fornasiero
Matricola 835039
Anno Accademico
2014 / 2015
ii
i
Ringraziamenti
Il significato di questo lavoro va ben oltre l’essere una mera ricerca linguistica;
esso riflette, infatti, il mio rapporto con la LIS, un rapporto di avvicinamento e scoperta
mosso dal fascino di questa lingua, che si parla con le mani e si ascolta con gli occhi. Il
mio percorso presso l’Università Ca’ Foscari è iniziato quasi per caso, ma si è rivelato
essere proprio ciò che cercavo e che volevo studiare. Il mondo delle lingue dei segni mi
ha entusiasmato fin da subito, e più ne scoprivo la ricchezza, più volevo farne parte, sia
analizzando la LIS da un punto di vista linguistico, sia incontrando persone Sorde. Da
qui, l’impegno nell’impararla sempre di più, per poterla analizzare e studiare, con
l’obiettivo di scardinare le false credenze che riguardano le lingue dei segni e diffondere
le loro numerose peculiarità.
In merito allo sviluppo di questa tesi, un sentito ringraziamento va alla mia
correlatrice, la Prof. ssa Chiara Branchini, per aver creduto fin da subito nell’idea della
mia ricerca, e per avermi indirizzato con attenzione e precisione verso le strategie
migliori da adottare per lo sviluppo di una ricerca sperimentale; ringrazio sinceramente,
inoltre, il mio correlatore, il Prof. Guglielmo Cinque, per aver supervisionato il mio
lavoro ma soprattutto per avermi ispirato nella scelta dell’argomento da affrontare in
questa tesi. Dedico un ringraziamento speciale anche a tutti i Professori incontrati in
questi anni di università, che mi hanno permesso di scoprire il fascino e la grandezza del
Linguaggio umano, e mi hanno trasmesso l’amore per la LIS e la ricerca linguistica.
Ad Alessio di Rienzo del CNR di Roma, per avermi prontamente fornito un
articolo di ricerca linguistica senza il quale il mio lavoro sarebbe stato molto più
difficoltoso, grazie infinite.
Ringrazio Chiara, per aver realizzato in una settimana i disegni che hanno reso
possibile la mia ricerca linguistica, interpretando perfettamente le mie idee. Grazie di
cuore a Betty, Laura e al Prof. Gabriele Caia, non solo per essersi resi disponibili come
informanti per la mia ricerca, ma anche per avermi insegnato la LIS e l’orgoglio che
tutti dovrebbero dimostrare per la loro lingua madre.
Non sarebbe stato così bello, anche se molto faticoso, scrivere questa tesi se non
avessi avuto intorno a me alcune persone fondamentali: prima fra tutte mia sorella
Giulia, con la quale ho condiviso lo stesso destino per tanti lunghi mesi; dopo fatiche,
risate, pianti isterici, litigate e abbracci raggiungiamo insieme, come sempre e in tutto,
questo traguardo, certe di essere l’una il sostegno dell’altra. Ai miei genitori, per aver
sopportato non una ma ben due figlie in ansia da tesi, grazie, per non aver smesso di
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provare ad allietare le nostre giornate nonostante i nostri bronci, e per aver sempre
creduto in noi, sostenendo le nostre scelte e accompagnandoci entusiasti. Grazie alle
mie compagne, colleghe e sorelle acquisite conosciute all’università, Chiara, Giulia e
Margherita, avete reso questi cinque anni i più belli. Grazie agli amici di sempre, per
essere riusciti a portarmi fuori di casa ogni tanto facendomi smettere di pensare alla tesi
per un po’, in particolare grazie ad Anna, per il suo entusiasmo e le sue telefonate
inaspettate cariche di energia positiva.
Infine Riccardo, non ti ringrazierò mai abbastanza per come mi sei stato vicino e
hai attutito tutte le mie paure e arrabbiature, i miei dubbi e sbalzi di umore; grazie per
aver creduto ogni minuto in me e nel mio lavoro, anche quando io stessa non ci credevo
più. Grazie per la tua gioia e la tua forza, sei un esempio e compagno di vita.
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Table of Contents
Ringraziamenti ................................................................................................................ i
Annotation Conventions ............................................................................................... vi
List of abbreviations ..................................................................................................... vii
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 1: Theoretical Framework ........................................................................ 4
1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 4
1.2 The Principles and Parameters Theory ...................................................... 4
1.3 Issues about linear word order variation ................................................... 9
1.3.1 Cecchetto, Geraci, Zucchi (2009) ........................................................ 9
1.3.2 Kayne’s Antisymmetric approach (1994) .......................................... 11
1.4 The Cartographic Project .......................................................................... 11
1.4.1 Greenberg’s Universal 20 and the movement of the NP ................... 12
1.5 The Extended Projection of the Noun Phrase .......................................... 15
1.6 AugP, PejP, DimP, EndP ........................................................................... 18
1.7 Conclusions .................................................................................................. 23
CHAPTER 2: Evaluative Morphology and Italian Sign Language ......................... 25
2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 25
2.2 The relevance of sign languages for linguistic research .......................... 25
2.3 Sign language morphology ......................................................................... 28
2.3.1 Simultaneous morphology ................................................................. 30
2.3.2 Sequential morphology ...................................................................... 35
2.3.3 Cuxac (1985, 2000) ........................................................................... 37
2.3.3.1 Role shift ......................................................................................... 40
2.4 Evaluative morphology .............................................................................. 41
2.4.1 Italian Sign Language (LIS): a general overview ............................. 42
iv
2.4.2 Non-manual markers (NMMs) ........................................................... 45
2.4.3 Classifiers (CLs) ................................................................................ 52
2.4.4 Evaluative strategies .......................................................................... 57
2.5 LIS adjectives .............................................................................................. 64
2.5.1 Adjectives realized through classifiers .............................................. 71
2.6 Conclusions .................................................................................................. 74
CHAPTER 3: A descriptive account .......................................................................... 77
3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 77
3.2 Methodological issues ................................................................................. 77
3.3 The Fairy Tales Corpus .............................................................................. 79
3.3.1 Collection and analysis of data ......................................................... 80
3.3.2 Preliminary results ............................................................................ 89
3.4 Elicited data ................................................................................................. 91
3.4.1 Picture naming task ........................................................................... 92
3.4.1.1 Analysis ........................................................................................... 93
3.4.2 Narration task .................................................................................... 97
3.4.2.1 Analysis ........................................................................................... 98
3.4.3 Grammaticality judgements ............................................................. 106
3.5 Conclusions ................................................................................................ 108
CHAPTER 4: Evaluative Morphology in other Sign Languages........................... 111
4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 111
4.2 American Sign Language (ASL) .............................................................. 111
4.3 British Sign Language (BSL) ................................................................... 113
4.4 German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache: DGS) .............. 115
4.5 French Sign Language (LSF) ................................................................... 116
4.6 Polish Sign Language (PJM) .................................................................... 117
4.7 Israeli Sign Language (ISL) ..................................................................... 119
4.8 Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) ...................................................... 120
v
Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 123
Appendix 1 .................................................................................................................. 128
Appendix 2 .................................................................................................................. 129
References.................................................................................................................... 130
vi
Annotation Conventions
SIGN Gloss identifying a sign
SIGN+++ Reduplicated sign
SIGN-SIGN Two or more English words
corresponding to one single sign
SIGNk Co-referentiality of two or more signs in
the sentence
3SIGN1 Subject and object verb agreement; e.g.
here they indicate a third person subject
and a first person object
IX Generic pointing sign
IX1P Pointing sign functioning as personal
pronouns
CL Classifier
NMMs Non-manual markers
d. h. Dominant hand
n. d. h. Non-dominant hand
SIGN
Sign occurring with non-manual markers
SIGN---- Retention of the sign articulated with one
hand, while articulating another sign with
the other hand
NMMs
vii
List of abbreviations
ABSL Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language
AdaSL Adamorobe Sign Language
ASL
American Sign Language
BSL
British Sign Language
DGS (Deutsche Gebärdensprache)
German Sign Language
FSL
French Sign Language
ISL
Israeli Sign Language
LIS
Italian Sign Language
NGT
Sign Language of the Netherlands
NSL
Nicaraguan Sign Language
PJM
Polish Sign Language
AgrP
Agreement Phrase
AP
Adjective Phrase
CLP
Classifier Phrase
CP
Complementizer Phrase
DemP
Demonstrative Phrase
DP
Determiner Phrase
FP
Functional Projection
NP
Noun Phrase
NumP
Numeral Phrase
VP Verb Phrase
1
Introduction
The first time I saw my LIS (Italian Sign Language) teacher signing, I was
completely amazed by those hands moving and telling things. At the beginning, I was
eager of learning as many signs as possible in order to be able to use that language, with
which I had immediately fallen in love. I remember telling everyone what I was
learning with great enthusiasm and I enjoyed discrediting those false beliefs regarding
sign languages that, unfortunately, are still strongly present in our society. For example,
it is a common belief that sign language is universal and that people use sign language
because they are mute. It is the lack of information that let these false beliefs grow and
spread but luckily, studies on sign languages are increasing. Particularly, in my
dissertation I will deal with LIS, the language of the Italian Deaf community, whose
linguistic investigations has begun less than 50 years ago, thanks to the work of a group
of researchers belonging to the Centre of National Research (CNR) in Rome, led by
Virginia Volterra. Even though linguistic research on LIS is still quite recent, the first
studies have allowed to recognise this language as a real linguistic system, instead of
purely gestural. Linguistic, psychological and neurological studies have observed that
sign languages are characterised by the same grammatical features and linguistic
principles defining oral languages; for this reason, sign languages represent a challenge
for linguistic research since they are regulated by the same Principles and Parameters
detected for oral languages, but they are conveyed through a different modality, being
transmitted through the hands and body movements and visually perceived. Despite
their similarity with oral languages, sign languages are independent linguistic systems
characterised by modality-specific peculiarities and grammatical complexities. Since the
interest towards sign language research has begun to spread, studies have focused on
both their modality-specific characteristics and on their similarities and differences with
oral languages (see Pfau et al. 2012 for a panoramic overview about sign languages).
During the years at university, I have had the chance to discover more and more
these silent but rich linguistic systems, characterised by hands and body movements
conveying any kind of message, but also by people who have found in these languages
their access to the world, their possibility to communicate avoiding isolation, repression
and prejudices. Therefore, I have developed the curiosity to discover LIS from its heart,
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studying its structure, comparing it with Italian, my native language, and finding its
peculiarities.
This has been the starting point of the present work, whose topic regards a
peculiar aspect of Italian Sign Language belonging to Morphosyntax, namely the
realisation of diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features. I have
decided to address this phenomenon since it belongs to a domain still quite unexplored
in LIS, namely the extended projection of the noun phrase (NP). My interest has
develop from the study of functional projections hosting features of evaluative
morphology in their head positions, detected by Cinque (2007, 2015) through the
comparison of several oral languages, in a cartographic perspective aiming at finding a
position for all the elements characterising the noun phrase, within the NP extended
projection. Therefore, I have decided to develop a research integrating a descriptive and
a syntactic approach in order to fulfil two aims:
i. providing a systematic description of evaluative strategies in Italian Sign
Language;
ii. determining whether Cinque’s (2015) proposal of a finer-grained extended
projection of the NP characterised by functional projections hosting diminutive,
augmentative, endearment and pejorative features in their head positions, could
account for LIS as well.
The dissertation is organised as follows.
Chapter 1 presents the theoretical framework of this work, namely the
Cartographic Project (Cinque, Rizzi 2010) and the theories from which it developed, in
order to provide a panoramic view of the extended projection of the noun phrase, in
which the functional projections hosting evaluative features are ordinated, with respect
to the positions of the functional projections hosting the other nominal modifiers.
Particularly, the chapter deals with the syntactic movement of the NP assumed by
Cinque (2005a) to account for the different linear word order that oral languages
display, as far as meaningful elements mentioned in Greenberg’s (1965) Universal 20
are concerned.
Chapter 2 introduces the main topic of this dissertations, namely sign languages,
and their importance for linguistic research. Then, it concentrates on the domain to
which evaluative strategies belong, i. e. morphology, and describes the two kinds of
morphological processes characterising sign languages: simultaneous and sequential
morphology. The chapter is mainly dedicated to the description of LIS and its elements
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carrying out evaluative features, namely non-manual markers and classifiers, as
individuated by Petitta et al. (2015) in a preliminary study of these features in LIS. To
complete the picture of the extended projection of the NP in LIS, I mention two studies
concerning the order of meaningful elements within it, with particular reference to the
order of adjectives: Bertone (2007) and Mantovan (2015). They both assume that the
NP moves upward the syntactic structure pied-piping the categories that dominate it and
I integrate their findings about the extended projection of the NP inserting the functional
projections hosting evaluative features (Cinque 2015), assuming that, in LIS, their head
position host non-manual markers as morphemes conveying diminutive, augmentative,
endearment and pejorative features.
Chapter 3 focuses on the research I developed to provide a tentative description
of LIS evaluative strategies and to examine their behaviour with respect to other
nominal modifiers. In order to obtain solid results, though it is a preliminary study, I
have divided my research in two stages: first, I have analysed a corpus of fairy tales
realised in LIS by a LIS native signer and then, I have analysed data collected through
tasks of picture naming, narration and grammaticality judgements involving other three
LIS native signers. The results allowed me to provide a systematic description of the
evaluative strategies in Italian Sign Language and to confirm that the order of the
functional projections hosting features of evaluative morphology individuated by
Cinque (2015) for oral languages, holds for LIS as well.
Chapter 4 closes the dissertation with examples of evaluative strategies attested
in other sign languages of the world, confirming evaluative morphology as a
morphological type given its universality and productivity among sign languages.
This work constitutes a preliminary study, whose results have arisen linguistic
considerations that need to be further investigated by future researches, but they confirm
once again the importance of studies concerning sign language linguistics in a
typological perspective that aims at describing sign languages’ peculiarities and their
similarities with oral languages, offering new insights to increase our knowledge of the
Language Faculty.
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CHAPTER 1
Theoretical Framework
1.1 Introduction
The present dissertation assumes the Cartographic Project (Cinque, Rizzi 2010)
as Theoretical Framework since the main topic concerns some functional projections
belonging to the extended projection of the noun phrase (NP). Therefore, the first
chapter offers a general overview of the theories from which it developed and then
focuses of the NP extended projection.
§1.2 is dedicated to the Principle and Parameters Theory (Chomsky 1981, 1986),
which assumes the existence of a Universal Grammar (henceforth: UG) and claims that
the syntax of all languages of the world can be explained through the ‘X-bar theory’;
after having described the most important Principles and Parameters characterising UG,
the dissertation goes on focusing on the ‘Head-Complement parameter’ in § 1.3,
considering two opposite proposals advanced in the literature. The brief presentation of
the Antisymmetric Approach (cfr. § 1.3.2) is necessary to introduce the Cartographic
Project in § 1.4, which also includes a particular reference to Greenberg’s Universal 20
and the NP movement (Cinque 2005a). § 1.5 deals with the NP extended projection and
§ 1.6 focuses on some functional projections belonging to it, namely the ones hosting
the diminutive, augmentative, pejorative and endearment features.
1.2 The Principles and Parameters Theory
Generative Linguistics has developed from the work of an American linguist,
Noam Chomsky, whose objective was to explore and analyse rules underlying the
linguistic competence of a speaker. He has made a clear distinction between
‘competence’ and ‘performance’, defining the first as “[…] the speaker-hearer’s
knowledge of his language” and the latter as “[…] the actual use of language in concrete
situations” (Chomsky 1965: 4). According to him, a speaker’s real knowledge of his
language is specified by a ‘generative grammar’ defined as:
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“[…] a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns
structural descriptions to sentences.” (Chomsky 1965: 8).
He assumes that an individual is able to produce and comprehend an infinite
number of sentences starting from some determined and fixed rules, which characterise
the ‘Universal Grammar’. The UG is basically an innate faculty of the mind, which
belongs and characterizes only human beings. It is based upon ‘principles’ and
‘parameters’. Principles are universal biological laws regarding the structure and
organization of human language, which allow a child to build and naturally develop the
language faculty; Parameters are language-specific features that need to be set in order
to develop a language. The result of this process of setting is the great variation attested
among languages. According to Chomsky’s idea, Parameters are set through experience
coming from the linguistic environment surrounding an individual. The setting must
happen within the so called ‘critical period’ (Lenneberg 1967), which lasts until
puberty. After that period, acquiring a language becomes very hard and sometimes
almost impossible1. Once the Parameters are set, a particular grammar is developed, the
one Chomsky calls “core grammar” (Chomsky 1981: 7).
Hockett (1960) has described the Universal Principles characterising UG, I will
present the most important ones:
i. Arbitrariness: there is no direct relationship between the signifier and the
signified;
ii. Productivity: the capacity of producing an infinite number of sentences from a
finite number of elements combined together following some basic rules;
iii. Recursion: any sentence could be implemented with new linguistic material;
iv. Discreteness: the grammar of a language can be split up in discrete units such
as: phonemes, morphemes and syllables;
v. All sentences have a subject;
1 The neurolinguistic processes underlying the development of the language faculty will not be
considered in the present dissertation. For a general overview the reader is referred to Denes (2009).
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vi. Structure dependency: every language is characterised by strict rules that guide
the speaker to produce grammatical sentences and to reject2 the ungrammatical
ones. The definition given by Chomsky is the following:
“All known formal operations in the grammar of English, or of any other
language, are structure-dependent” (Chomsky 1971: 30).
Parameters are several and they define crosslinguistic variation. For the sake of the
dissertation, I mention those directly related to the topic of my thesis, which will be
addressed in the course of the discussion:
i. Pro-drop (null subject): it “determines whether the subject of a clause can be
supressed” (Chomsky 1988: 64). Languages vary according to the possibility of
phonologically omitting the subject. A child acquiring English, for example, will
set the [-] value because English does not allow null subject, whereas a child
acquiring Italian will set the [+] one.
ii. Linear order: languages vary with respect to the combination of subject, object
and verb in the sentence. Out of the six possible orders (SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS,
OSV, OVS), only three have been detected in natural languages: SVO, SOV,
VSO3. The order of these three elements determines the order of other
constituents such as prepositions, adjectives, pronouns, negation and -wh
constituents.
iii. Head-complement parameter: languages can be head-initial or head-final,
according to the position of the head with respect to their complement.
Proceeding with the analysis of the processes underlying world languages, Chomsky
(1981) assumes that the UG is characterised by some subcomponents, able to explain
how the language faculty works and how a speaker’s ‘competence’ becomes
‘performance’. He individuates the following subcomponents (Chomsky 1981: 5):
2 Chomsky (1965) distinguishes the concept of ‘acceptability’ from the one of
‘grammaticalness’: the first belongs to the study of performance, whereas the second belongs to the study
of competence. 3 See Greenberg (1963) for further details.
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i. Lexicon
ii. Syntax
-Categorial component
-Transformational component
iii. PF-component
iv. LF-component
These components are organised in the so-called ‘Y-model4’, which represents
the theory on which the language faculty develops, as we can see in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The Y-Model (adapted from Chomsky 1981)
The Y-Model represents how the several sub-components of UG interact with
each other and it defines the process through which the lexicon becomes a spelled out
utterance. The lexicon, which includes both lexical (e.g. nouns, verbs, etc.) and
functional (e.g. determiners, auxiliaries, etc.) elements, specifies the abstract morpho-
phonological structure of each item and its syntactic features. Elements of the lexicon
are merged together in deep structure (‘D-structure’) in which argument structure and
thematic roles are specified. The structural configuration in which words are merged is
called ‘X-bar theory’.
This theory, initially proposed by Chomsky (1970) and later revised by other
authors, proposes that functional and lexical categories have one deep ‘phrase
structure’, which is characterised by one ‘head’ (X°), whose nature determines the
syntactic category of the phrase (e.g. if the head is a noun, a noun phrase will be
4 Minimalism (Chomsky 1995) has simplified this model and removed both the D-structure and
the S-structure, substituting them with two structural operations: Merge and Move. The result is a three-
level representation structure: Numeration (lexical items), Phonological Form and Logical Form.
8
yielded), one ‘specifier’ and one ‘complement’ (YP). The existence of a variable X that
can represent various syntactic elements, introduces the possibility for all linguistic
categories to conform to one and the same syntactic structure. It is an endocentric
structure since it is organized around a head, X°. Moreover, the head, which dominates
words, projects its category to two upper levels through the Projection Principle: the
intermediate projection (X’) and the maximal projection (XP). The X’ is derived from
the interaction between the head and a YP complement and the interaction between a
specifier and the intermediate projection creates the maximal projection, XP. Figure 2
shows the X-bar structure.
Figure 2. The X-Bar format (Haegeman 1996: 90)
The great contribution of this theory is that it can be extended to all syntactic
categories and to all languages of the world. According to this theory, the derivation
goes on with the operation called ‘Move-α’ during which any category (α) that needs to
move in order to check linguistic features, undergoes syntactic movements, turning the
D-structure into the surface-structure (‘S-structure’). The moved elements leave a trace
in their original positions. Thanks to syntactic movement every language can be
described and represented through the X-bar scheme. The last step of the operation is
Spell-out. The S-structure is mapped into two interfaces: the Phonological Form (PF),
responsible for the articulatory outcome, and the Logical Form (LF) guiding semantic
interpretation of the sentence.
It is important to underline the fact that there are strict rules of domain among
elements. The most important is the relation of ‘C-Command’ (constituent command),
whose definition is the following:
9
“α c-commands β iff α does not dominates β nor vice versa, and every node that
dominates α dominates β.” (Chomsky 1986:8)
Furthermore, constituents must move in order to respect the Case-Filter
(Chomsky 1981), a condition requiring that all DPs have a case. By doing so, syntactic
movement follows the Principle of Structure Conservation, which implies that the
arrival position of an element is of the same kind of the original one. For this reason, a
head can only move to another head position, a maximal projection to another maximal
projection and so on. There are three kinds of syntactic movement: ‘A-movement’,
which refers to the movement of a maximal projection from an argument position
towards another, ‘A-bar movement’ regards the movement of a maximal projection
towards the Specifier position of a functional projection (e.g. CP, DP, etc.) and ‘head
movement’ concerns the movement of a head towards a higher head position. The final
structure accounts for the linear word order, which reflects variation among languages.
Even though it seems that all languages can refer to a one and unique syntactic
structure to be described, there are still some controversies about the way in which the
different linear word orders attested are derived.
Since the main topic of this dissertation concerns LIS, the next paragraph will
briefly presents two opposite approaches that try to account for the main word order
attested in LIS, namely SOV: one is proposed by Cecchetto, Geraci, Zucchi (2009) and
the other one by Bertone (2007) based on Kayne’s (1994) Antisymmetric Approach.
1.3 Issues about linear word order variation
As far as linear word order is concerned, there is a certain freedom in the
framework of Generative Grammar. For instance, there are several theories trying to
explain how the final word order is derived, based on the position of the head with
respect to its complement. The theory proposed by Cecchetto, Geraci, Zucchi (2009)
accounts for the sequence Complement>Head whereas Kayne’s (1994) Theory of the
Antisymmetry of Syntax claims for the existence of a universal order
Specifier>Head>Complement from which the other attested order are derived.
1.3.1 Cecchetto, Geraci, Zucchi (2009)
In the previous paragraph, I mentioned how languages can vary according to the
Head-Complement Parameter, which determines if the structure branches leftwards or
10
rightwards. The order of these two elements results in: head initial languages (e.g.
English), head-final languages (e.g. Japanese) and mixed languages such as Italian. In
head final languages, since the complement precedes the head, the linear word order is
SOV. Cecchetto, Geraci, Zucchi (2006) have proposed that LIS is a head-final language
and to account for that, they have conducted several studies verifying the distribution of
some elements such as negation, modals, aspectual markers, wh- elements, etc., with
respect to the verb and to each other5. In order to account for the position of wh-
elements, which in LIS occupy the right periphery of the clause, Cecchetto et al. (2009)
follow an X-bar scheme in which the complement precedes the head and the specifier is
on the right. This approach has been proposed for other sign languages (Neidle et al.
2000 for American Sign Language (ASL), Meir (2006) for Israeli Sign Language (ISL),
Aboh&Pfau (2009) for Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)).
Figure 3 shows the X-bar Complement>Head structures with NegP and CP
Specifiers on the right.
Figure 3. Cecchetto et al.’s (2009: 283) X-bar structure with Complement>head and negative and interrogative
Specifiers on the right.
5 The reader is referred to Cecchetto et al. (2006, 2009) for details about these studies.
11
1.3.2 Kayne’s Antisymmetric approach (1994)
In his Antisymmetric approach, Richard Kayne proposes that the linear word
order is governed by more rigid rules and formulates the Linear Correspondence Axiom
(LCA) to map asymmetrical c-command onto linear ordering. Through the analysis of
hierarchical structural relations, he convenes that in order to relate linear order and
syntactic hierarchy in mixed structures, it is necessary to consider both c-command and
precedence/subsequence as distinct factors. He concludes that the binary left-branching
Spec>Head>Complement is a universal structural hierarchy resulting in the following
linear order at the clausal level: SVO. The other word orders attested (e.g. SOV, VSO)
are derived through movement operations, which must necessarily be towards higher
positions on the left.
In the course of my dissertation I will refer to the work by Bertone (2007),
which follows the Antisymmetric approach to account for the structure of the
Determiner Phrase of LIS.
1.4 The Cartographic Project
The Cartographic Project (Cinque, Rizzi 2010) has developed on the
assumptions of the Antisymmetric approach and it aims at a full description of the
syntactic structure. The great variability among languages has brought several
researchers to propose the existence of different functional projections within the
syntactic structure, to account for the richness and complexity of human languages.
In this context, the Cartographic Project aims to define a structure as precise and
detailed as possible, which could account for all the languages of the world, through the
comparison of the differences among them. The basic idea is that all possible linguistic
realizations can be described and derived from one, uniform and universal structure; this
assumption is called ‘The Uniformity Principle’ (Chomsky 2001). The great variability
attested is due to movements (A-movement, A-bar movement and Head-movement) of
constituents.
Furthermore, this Approach claims that each morphosyntactic features should be
represented in the syntactic hierarchy by a unique head (Cinque, Rizzi 2010). This
assumption respects the ‘Mirror Principle’:
“Morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice
versa)” (Baker 1985: 375).
12
Baker has formulated this Principle to integrate both the syntactic and
morphological component characterising linguistic phenomena in world languages into
a unified account (e.g. the passivization process of a verb in English).
The linguist who begun this process of ‘decomposition’ of the syntactic structure
in several functional projections is Pollock (1989). He compared the position of finite
verbs in English and French and saw that they occupied different positions. He
explained this difference through the ‘Split-INFL Hypothesis’ which postulates the
existence of two different projections within the Inflectional Phrase: Agr(ement)P,
hosting agreement morphemes and T(ense)P, hosting tense morphemes. Moreover, he
proposes the presence of an intermediate projection hosting negation, namely NegP.
Further researches have contributed to a finer-grained analysis of the syntactic
structure: Giusti (1996) has proposed the Split-DP hypothesis, Rizzi (1997) has detected
projections belonging to the left periphery of the structure, namely ForceP, TopicP and
FocusP (Split-CP Hypothesis), Ritter (1991) has proposed a projection for number,
NumP, and Cinque (1994, 1999) has postulated the existence of functional projections
hosting adverbs and adjectives in a fixed order.
Since the present dissertation focuses on nominal modification, I will
concentrate on the extended projection of the Noun Phrase (henceforth: NP) but before
that, it is necessary to refer to an important notion of linguistic typology, namely
Greenberg’s (1963) Universal 20.
1.4.1 Greenberg’s Universal 20 and the movement of the NP
In 1963 Greenberg publishes Some universals of grammar with particular
reference to the order of meaningful elements, a typological study developed through
the analysis of thirty languages whose characteristics could offer as wide a genetic and
areal coverage as possible. His objective was to analyse different linguistic phenomena,
in order to propose some ‘universals’, namely generalizations potentially able to
account for all world’s languages. In his detailed work, he presented 45 Universals
divided into three main parts: typology, syntax and morphology; they are implicational
universal, which means that they describe correlations of properties (e.g. the presence of
a feature implies the presence of another feature).
For the sake of this dissertation, I will consider Universal 20, which regards the
position of three nominal modifiers, namely demonstratives, numerals and adjectives.
13
“When any or all of the items (demonstrative, numeral, and descriptive
adjective) precede the noun, they are always found in that order. If they follow,
the order is either the same or its exact opposite.” (Greenberg 1963: 52)
Greenberg considers those elements which he defines ‘meaningful elements’ to
account for the variation attested in word order among languages; the generalization
above states that the possible word order options are essentially three: one in which the
modifiers precede the noun and two in which they follow it:
i. Dem>Num>Adj>N
ii. N>Dem>Num>Adj
iii. N>Adj>Num>Dem
Cinque (2005a) has demonstrated that out of the 24 logically possible
permutations of these nominal modifiers, only 14 orders are effectively attested in the
languages of the world. Among the possible attested orders, he proposes (i) to be the
universal hierarchical order that is attested when there is no movement of the NP,
namely when the noun remains in situ. He also proposes that each nominal modifier is
characterised by two projections: a lower one hosting the modifier and a higher one
serving as the functional agreement projection in which the NP lands, while moving
upward through the syntactic structure, and where adjectives, numerals and
demonstratives undergo agreement with the nominal phrase. Figure 4 represents the
structure proposed by Cinque (2005a).
14
Figure 4. DP structure (Cinque 2005a: 317)
Figure 4 represents the universal hierarchy order (i) with prenominal modifiers
and no NP movement.
The two postnominal orders are obtained through the movement of the NP, alone
or with pied-piping that Cinque calls the ‘whose-picture’ type.
Figure 5 shows the order (ii) N>Dem>Num>A.
Figure 5. NP movement alone (Cinque 2005a: 317)
15
As the structure clearly shows, in Figure 5 the NP moves upwards landing in the
Specifier Positions of the Agreement Projections.
The opposite order N>A>Num>Dem is due to a more complicate movement of
the NP, as can be seen in Figure 6.
Figure 6. NP movement with pied-piping of the ‘whose-picture’ type (Cinque 2005a: 318)
In Figure 6, the NP moves successively to each SpecAgrP ‘pied-piping’ the
category that dominates it, in a “[…] roll-up fashion that reverses the order of the
modifiers […]” (Cinque 2005a: 317).
In the context of this theoretical assumption, many researchers have focused
their attention on further analysing the extended projection of the noun phrase,
determining the position of other functional projections.
1.5 The Extended Projection of the Noun Phrase
Researchers have focused on the fact that the NP domain can be enriched with
several elements such as adjectives, pronouns, determiners, etc. A detailed analysis of
the portion of the syntactic structure dedicated to the noun and its modifiers, commonly
called the ‘extended projection of the NP’, has been carried out.
Abney (1987) has claimed for a correspondence between the NP and the Verb
Phrase (henceforth: VP), being both lexical projections dominated by several functional
projections. The extended projection of the NP is the Determiner Phrase (henceforth:
DP), which hosts nominal modifiers, whereas the VP is anchored to discourse by the
16
functional projection IP (Inflection Phrase), which accommodates temporal and
agreement specifications. To be precise, Grimshaw (1991) has suggested that the
extended projection of a lexical projection is that portion of syntactic structure that
contains both the lexical projection and the several functional projections associated
with it.
Abney’s (1987) ‘DP hypothesis’, proposes that the lexical maximal projection
NP is semantically defined thanks to the functional maximal projection DP because the
determiner (articles, quantifiers and pronouns) specifies the reference of the noun.
Within the theoretical framework of the Cartographic Approach, great
contributions to the analysis of the extended projection of the NP6 have been provided
by Brugè (2002), Giusti (2002), Scott (2002) and Cinque (2010). Brugè, through the
study of demonstratives in Spanish, has argued that “[…] Demonstrative Phrases are
‘base generated’ in the specifier of a functional projection […]” (Cinque 2002: 7);
Giusti accounts for the variation among languages in the expression of definiteness and
Scott successfully accounts for a finer grained functional structure of attributive
adjectives in objective nominals. Finally, Cinque (2010) gives a complete explanation
of the syntax of adjectives.
Of course, numerals, demonstratives and adjectives are not the unique modifiers
of the noun; Cinque (2005a), following the basic assumption that all modifiers enter a
fixed syntactic structure resulting from repeated applications of Merge, enriches the
syntactic structure with other functional projections dedicated to other modifiers:
universal quantifiers, ordinal numerals, numeral classifiers and relative clauses (RC).
The order he proposes to accommodate these functional projections, with respect to the
positions of the meaningful elements presented in § 1.4.1 is the following:
[Quniv… [Dem…[Numord…[RC…[Numcard…[Cl…[Adj…NP]]]]]]]
As far as adjectives are concerned, insights by Scott (2002) deserve to be
mentioned because he proposes a finer grained order of adjectives within the syntactic
structure. He relates syntax and semantics followings Cinque, who states that adjectives
occupy the Specifier position of dedicated functional projections between DP and NP.
Consequently, Scott considers the adjective order restriction and shows that an
6 See Cinque (2002) for further details about each research.
17
interaction between syntactic and semantic components of grammar exists, since some
functional projections are intrinsically related to the aspect of their semantic
interpretation. Notably, he succeeds in the definition of a universal hierarchy of AP-
related functional projections in object nominals that is: “DETERMINER > ORDINAL
NUMBER > CARDINAL NUMBER > SUBJECTIVE COMMENT > ?EVIDENTIAL
> SIZE > LENGTH > HEIGHT > SPEED > ?DEPTH > WIDTH > WEIGHT >
TEMPERATURE > ?WETNWSS > AGE > SHAPE > COLOR >
NATIONALITY/ORIGIN > MATERIAL > COMPOUND ELEMENT > NP” (Scott
2002: 114).
Further crosslinguistic analyses have led Cinque to expand the structure by
integrating Scott’s proposal. Cinque (2012) points out other functional projections,
between the APvalue and APsize, whose heads host diminutive, augmentative, endearment
and pejorative features. The NP movement towards the successively higher SpecAgr
positions allows it to control or incorporate those features.
Figure 7 represents a partial map of the extended projection of the NP7 (derived
from Cinque’s 2012 analysis) in which both phrases (QP, DemP, AP, etc.) and heads
(Det°, Number°, Diminutive°, Pejorative°, Endearment°) are accommodated.
7 For reasons of space, all the AgrPs dominating functional projections have been omitted.
18
Figure 7. Partial map of the extended projection of the NP (Cinque 2012)
Since my dissertation focuses on diminutive, augmentative, endearment and
pejorative features, I will now consider those functional projections hosting these
features as heads, taking into account Cinque’s (2007, 2015) analysis.
1.6 AugP, PejP, DimP, EndP
Diminutive/augmentative and endearment/pejorative features are present in all
languages of the world, and they are realised in different ways: through phonological
modification, by adding affixes or by using diminutive particles or functional adjectives.
They represent the grammatical encoding of the notions of ‘small’ and ‘big’ and of the
affective notions ‘nice/lovely’ and ‘bad/ugly’ (Jurafsky 1996). They belong to what is
commonly called ‘evaluative morphology’, which mainly refers to processes of
diminutivisation and augmentativisation but comprehends also those emotional
overtones of approval and endearment and of disapproval or pejoration. As Grandi
(2011) states, evaluation implies two different perspectives: one objective, descriptive
or quantitative, and the other subjective or qualitative; the first is represented by the
19
semantic primitives ‘small’ and ‘big’ whereas the second is represented by the semantic
primitives ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
Even though these features are greatly attested among languages, their status is
still not very clear. Some researchers consider them as being part of derivational
morphology (Dressler, Merlini Barbaresi 1994), others support a status which is
halfway between derivational and inflectional morphology (Bauer 1997), while others
claim that evaluative morphology is neither derivational nor inflectional, but rather sui
generis (Fortin 2011). There are, however, some considerations on which linguists
agree: among the affixes belonging to evaluative morphology, the ones conveying
diminutive features are unmarked, whereas the augmentative ones represent the marked
form; moreover, there seems to be a basic connotative change that is generally positive
for diminutives and negative for augmentatives8.
The wide presence of these occurrences has led linguists to a syntactic reflection,
namely the possibility that there might be functional projections hosting diminutive,
augmentative, endearment and pejorative affixes within the functional structure of the
NP in all languages. Cinque (2015) has conducted a typological study to account for the
position of these features, which he has recognised as being heads of dedicated
functional projections, through the comparison of several languages: Italian, German,
Piapoco, Russian, English, Nankina and Fuyug. In particular, the analysis of the
ordering of the diminutive and augmentative particles, with respect to the other
elements of the NP, of a number of (non-Austronesian) Papuan languages of New
Guinea has been useful to provide evidence that the diminutive and augmentative heads
are strictly linked and contiguous to the APsize. These data have been confirmed by
English, whose adjective little can be used both as adjective of size and as an element
conveying the endearing feature. In the first case, little is a size adjective similar to
small and can receive contrastive stress, as reported in example 1:
1) I can’t stand little/smáll cars (Dressler, Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 114).
When the use of little corresponds to that of diminutive suffixes of Romance languages,
it does not receive stress, but it is rather reduced to li’l and it can only be attributive.
8 The present dissertation will not focus on morphopragmatic aspects of evaluative morphology.
For a deeper analysis the reader is referred to Fortin (2011), Dressler, Merlini-Barbaresi (1994), Bauer
(1997) and references there cited.
20
Furthermore, considering the canonical order of the main classes of adjectives,
which is value > size > shape > colour > provenance > NP, the diminutive functional
projection is located below ValueP and above SizeP, ShapeP, ColourP, ProvenanceP, as
can be seen in the following examples (Cinque 2015: 19-20):
2) a. That’s quite a nice little discovery you’ve made there
b. *?That’s quite a little nice discovery you’ve made there
3) a. ?That’s a big little discovery you’ve made there
b. That’s a little big discovery you’ve made there
4) a. You, my little round baby face
b. *?You, my round little baby face
5) a. You, my little white guinea pig
b. *?You, my white little guinea pig
6) a. My little Chinese doll
b. *My Chinese little doll
As far as the augmentative, endearment and pejorative features are concerned,
interesting insights are provided by Italian.
Italian expresses these features by adding different suffixes to the noun. They are
considered “morphopragmatic devices within derivational morphology” (Dressler,
Merlini Barbaresi 1994: 85) since they not only modify the morphology of the noun, but
they also alter its meaning. Being evaluative alteratives, they have connotative functions
that are often generalised as being positive for diminutives and negative for
augmentatives. Here are the more productive suffixes for each feature:
i. Diminutive: -ino
ii. Augmentative: -one
iii. Endearment: -etto, -ello, -uccio, -otto
iv. Pejorative: -accio, -astro
21
Furthermore, since they belong to morphopragmatics and they are involved in
everyday language, suffixes expressing diminutive, augmentative, endearment and
pejorative have changed connotation and occurrence through the years. Lepschy (1989)
takes into account -etto and -ino, which he considers as both belonging to the class of
diminutives, and examines their usage through the history of Italian. He states that -etto,
at the beginning, was used by educated people, whereas -ino was typical of lower
classes. As far as their meaning is concerned, he outlines that -etto is used to indicate
the idea of smallness in an objective way, while -ino conveys emotional involvement,
that could become either endearment or pejorative. Generally speaking, the diminutive
is used to convey basic concepts of dimensional smallness, which could be expressed
also by endearment suffixes: the difference relies on the emotional and affective
involvement. For what concerns augmentatives, they only have the denotative meaning
of enlargement, but they can also be combined with features of endearment and
pejorative.
Although the connotation of these suffixes is still not very clear, their possible
combination is well known. In fact, it seems that it depends on the phonology of words.
Ettinger (1974) states that there is a general tendency to avoid the repetition of the
consonant or vowel, while choosing the proper suffix. For this reason, words ending in
-t and having a stressed vowel -e tend to avoid -etto, whereas the ones ending in -n with
a stressed vowel -i avoid -ino. For instance, it is common vinetto (from vino, i.e. wine)
instead of *vinino, or bigliettino (from biglietto, i. e. ticket) instead of *bigliettetto.
Considering combinations of two evaluating alteratives suffixes, it is well known
that only -ett-ino, -acci-one, -etto-one, -ino-accio are possible, as the following
examples show (Cinque 2007: 6-7).
7) a. uomo om-etto om-ino om-ett-ino *om-in-etto
b. nonno nonn-etto nonn-ino nonn-ett-ino *nonn-in-etto
c. casa cas-etta cas-ina cas-ett-ina *cas-in-etta
d. libro libr-etto libr-ino libr-ett-ino *libr-in-etto
e. faccia facc-etta facc-ina facc-ett-ina *facc-in-etta
f. gamba gamb-etta gamb-ina gamb-ett-ina *gamb-in-etta
g. stanza stanz-etta stanz-ina stanz-ett-ina *stanz-in-etta
h. viso vis-etto vis-ino vis-ett-ino *vis-in-etto
22
8) a. uomo om-accio om-one om-acci-one *om-on-accio
b. libro libr-accio libr-one ?libr-acc-ione *libr-on-accio
c. donna donn-accia donn-ona donn-acci-ona *donn-on-accia
d. nonno nonn-accio nonn-one nonn-acci-one *nonn-on-accio
e. cane cagn-accio cagn-one cagn-acci-one *cagn-on-accio
f. film film-accio film-one ?film-acci-one *film-on-accio
The examples above respect the Mirror Principle (Baker 1985, cfr. § 1.2) since
the combination of the suffixes reflects their syntactic derivation; an immediate
consequence of this Principle is that suffixes which are nearer to the head belong to
lower functional heads. By looking at the examples we can infer that the order within
the syntactic structure of the functional projections hosting diminutive, augmentative,
endearment and pejorative features in their head positions is the following:
AugP>PejP>DimP>EndP. Figure 8 exemplifies the structural account of these heads.
Figure 8. APvalue>AugP>PejP>DimP>EndP>APsize (Cinque 2015: 20)
23
1.7 Conclusions
This chapter has been devoted to the description of the theoretical framework on
which the present dissertation is grounded. The presentation of the Principle and
Parameters Theory and of the X-bar structure has been fundamental to the further
explanation of the Cartographic Project, which constitutes the background on which the
proposal of an extended projection of the noun phrase has developed. Following
Greenberg’s Universal 20, many linguists have improved the analysis of the syntactic
structure of the NP assuming the existence of functional projections hosting meaningful
elements.
Since the aim of the present dissertation is to provide an account of how LIS
expresses diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features, in this chapter
I have dedicated great attention to the works of Cinque (2005a, 2007, 2015), who claims
for the presence of functional projections hosting these features in their head positions.
24
25
CHAPTER 2
Evaluative Morphology and
Italian Sign Language
2.1 Introduction
The first chapter has offered a panoramic view of the theoretical issues on which
this dissertation is based. The present chapter focuses the attention of morphology,
beginning with a reflection about the importance of sign languages for linguistic
research (§ 2.2). The main differences between morphology of signed and spoken
languages are presented in § 2.3 and the two types of morphology, simultaneous and
sequential, characterising sign languages are described in § 2.3.1 and § 2.3.2
respectively. § 2.3.3 concerns a peculiar theory proposed by Cuxac (1985, 2000) who
firmly claims for a morphological origin of signs and gives great importance to
iconicity. Since Cuxac’s Transfer of Person (TP) involves the whole signer’s body, the
dissertation goes on presenting a narrative technique commonly referred to as role shift
(§ 2.3.3.1). § 2.4 is dedicated to the presentation of evaluative morphology in Italian
Sign Language, which is briefly introduced in § 2.4.1; § 2.4.2, 2.4.3 are dedicated to
those LIS elements involved in evaluative morphology, namely non-manual markers
and classifiers. § 2.4.5 presents LIS evaluative strategies. § 2.5.1 provides some insights
about LIS attributive adjectives, with particular attention to those realised through
classifiers (§ 2.5.1). Finally, I order all these elements within a syntactic structure,
which sketches the positions of the several functional projections between the DP and
NP, hosting elements of evaluative morphology, as proposed by Cinque (2007, 2015).
2.2 The relevance of sign languages for linguistic research
Investigation on sign languages within the framework of Generativism greatly
contributes to linguistic research in general, to our understanding of the Language
Faculty and to typological studies. Since Greenberg’s (1963) typological study, the
interest of linguists has reached sign languages because they provide a great opportunity
to confirm whether the theoretical frameworks that have been mainly developed for
spoken languages, can also account for sign languages. For instance, if Language is
26
considered a faculty peculiar of human beings, a sort of ‘mental organ’ that develops on
the base of principles and parameters (Chomsky 1965), then spoken and signed
languages should display the same core properties, and the same Universals describing
spoken languages should be valid for sign languages too.
Even though sign languages share important features with spoken languages,
such as sublexical structures, word order constraints and morphological features, they
show some peculiar features that constitute an interesting challenge for linguistics. First
of all, their nature of visual-gestural languages contributes to increase studies about the
richness of the human language faculty, which can be completely expressed without
involving the phono-articulatory system and can develop on its own, even in situation of
greatly impoverished linguistic input. To this issue, the study of newly born sign
languages and the case of home-signers has brought a huge contribution to the idea of
an innate linguistic organ. Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) and Al-Sayyid Bedouin
Sign Language (ABSL) are two examples of sign languages that have developed
spontaneously out of nothing, completely unrelated to any well-developed language
(Meir, Sandler, Padden, Aronoff, 2010). This fact constitutes clear evidence for the
existence of a Universal Grammar guiding the process of development of the language
faculty and provides interesting insights for future research; another example which
accounts for a universal architecture of the language faculty regards the case of ‘home-
signers’. The term refers to deaf individuals with hearing parents, whose linguistic
stimulus is greatly impoverished since their hearing deficit prevents them from
acquiring a spoken language and they have no contact with other deaf people, so they
experience linguistic isolation. Even if the situation is really complicated, these people
spontaneously develop a gestural system whose properties may be governed by UG.
Some studies (Goldin-Meadow 2012) have drawn the attention towards the period in
which they experience linguistic deprivation: it seems that the accuracy with which they
acquire this gestural system is indirectly proportional to the laps of time during which
they have experienced linguistic deprivation. Further research about this relation would
really improve knowledge about the critical period for language acquisition.
In this perspective, intermodal studies of spoken and signed languages are not
only useful to determine similarities and differences between them, but they also greatly
contribute to Generative Grammar to prove whether its principles are really universals
or not. At the same time, intra-modal studies are fundamental to determine specific
properties of sign languages and to account for variation among them.
27
The increasing availability of data from different sign languages of the world
allows to enrich sign language typology and typological studies in general. According to
Zeshan (2008), sign language typology results from the interaction between sign
language research and linguistic typology: sign language typology refers to theoretical
and methodological resources of linguistic typology but it enlarges the range of the
available languages while including sign languages; at the same time, it relies on results
coming from sign language research to account for linguistic variation among sign
languages in a typological perspective. This interaction is illustrated in Figure 9.
Figure 9. The source disciplines of sign language typology. (Zeshan 2008: 672)
On the one hand, sign language typology aims at creating a detailed
documentation of individual sign languages within the framework of descriptive
research in sign linguistics; on the other, it focuses on cross-linguistic studies of sign
languages. These studies lead to the theory of variation across sign languages,
contributing to both modality-independent language universals (the ones that are valid
for both signed and spoken languages) and modality-differences between signed and
spoken languages.
To pursue the first aim, it is necessary to collect reliable and adequately
structured information coming from as many sign languages as possible. However, the
major part of available data describes sign languages of Europe and North America. It is
only recently that research on sign languages in villages communities or on different
understudied sign languages has increased in number and is now accessible.
Given the quite recent interest for sign languages and considering that not even
sign languages’ users are fully aware of the status of their language, linguistic data must
be analysed taking into account sociolinguistic aspects, source of linguistic variation:
28
access to linguistic stimuli, composition of the family nucleus, age of exposition and
acquisition of sign language, kind of education, gender, geographic origins, and so on.
2.3 Sign language morphology
As other fields of research, sign language morphology has been analysed
through a comparison with spoken language morphology, in a cross-modal perspective
aiming at detecting both the differences and the peculiarities that are sign language
specific.
Sign languages are visual-gestural languages, articulated through hands and
body movements and visually perceived. Their basic lexical units are signs, which can
be produced with either one or two hands. One-handed signs are realized with the
‘dominant hand’ (henceforth d.h.), which depends on whether the signer is right- or left-
handed, whereas two handed-signs can be characterised by the two hands articulating
the same sign or two different signs (Volterra [1987] 2004).
The sub-lexical structure of signs was first detected by William Stokoe in 1960.
While analysing American Sign Language (ASL), he individuated discrete meaningless
elements characterising signs. Considering their similarity with phonemes, he called
these meaningless units ‘cheremes’ and divided them in three main categories: location,
handshape and movement. Location is the place (on the body or in the space around the
signer) in which the sign is articulated, the handshape regards the configuration
assumed by the hand and movement refers to the movement of the hand (Brentari
2006). The combination of these meaningless elements leads to the creation of
meaningful units (morphemes), realizing duality of patterning (Hockett 1960) that is a
typical parameter of natural languages.
Later investigations (Battison 1978; Friedman 1977; Radutzky 1992) enriched
Stokoe’s (1960) works adding other important parameters such as: orientation of the
hand, namely the interaction between a place of articulation and a particular part of the
hand, and non-manual markers (NMMs) such as facial expressions and specific body or
head movement, which accompany the manual sign (cfr. § 2.4.2 for NMMs in Italian
Sign Language) and play a crucial role in the phonology, morphology and syntax of
sign languages. These five parameters are commonly considered as defining the
29
phonology of sign languages9 and the result of their simultaneous combination, namely
a morpheme (the smallest unit of meaning in a word or sign), is the subject of
morphology.
Signs can be ‘monomorphemic’, if they are characterised by a single morpheme
that cannot be broken into smaller units of meaning, or ‘polimorphemic’ if they contain
more than one sign (Brentari 2002; Johnston 2006; Schuit 2007). Moreover, morphemes
are divided between free morphemes that can occur alone, and bound morphemes,
which need to be combined with other morphemes.
Sandler (1989) has developed a prosodic model to categorize both simple and
complex signs, the Hand Tier Model (Sandler 1989: 22), assuming that each sign is
characterised by a hand-configuration (HC) and a Location-Movement-Location (LML)
template; the model also comprehends the place of articulation (P) of the sign. Many
researchers refer to this configuration as a sign-syllable.
Morphological processes are realized within the signing space, which plays a
crucial role in both derivational and inflectional morphology. Specifically, derivational
morphology regards those processes altering features of the above mentioned complex
units to create new words or signs, whereas inflectional morphology includes those
processes modifying already existing signs. Both processes mostly intervene on the sign
movement to realize morphological changes. Derivational and inflectional morphology
differ as far as productivity, regularity and automaticity are concerned. For instance,
derivational morphology is less common than inflectional one, which is regular and
automatic because inflectional processes apply to all members of a given category.
Morphological processes are realised through different operations: compounding,
affixation and reduplication and they can be sequential of simultaneous. Sequential
processes consist in adding phonological segments, suffixes or prefixes, onto a base
whereas in simultaneous operations, meaningful unites are added changing the existing
segments (Pfau et al. 2012). The resulting sign is a complex unit since morphological
content has been added to the existing base. To this respect, in his analysis of
morphological processes in sign languages, Schuit (2007) points out that “[…]
morphological processes are agglutinative” (Schuit 2007: 51) because the resulting
polymorphemic signs can be segmented into several morphemes.
9 For details about sign language phonology, the reader is referred to Pfau et al. (2012) and the
references there cited.
30
A significant difference between spoken and signed languages is that spoken
languages prefer sequential morphological operations, whereas sign languages show a
marked preference towards simultaneity (Aronoff et al. 2005; Meier et al. 2002;
Emmorey 2002). Aronoff and colleagues suggest that this preference is connected to the
modality through which sign languages are conveyed: being transmitted by the hands,
face and body and perceived through the eyes, sign languages have the capacity to
represent certain spatio-temporal concepts in a more direct and simultaneous manner
than spoken languages do.
Despite the preference for simultaneous morphological operations, SLs also
provide some examples of sequential (or concatenative) morphology, so they basically
exhibit two radically different morphological types in their grammars: on the one hand,
the rich, complex and simultaneous type (cfr. § 2.3.1), on the other hand, sequential
processes (cfr. § 2.3.2), which are sparse and relatively simple. Considering that this
complex but very rich system belongs to all sign languages studied so far, it is now
common to consider sign languages a “morphological type” (Aronoff et al. 2004: 21).
2.3.1 Simultaneous morphology
The term ‘simultaneous’ refers to nonsequential morphology in sign language
(Aronoff et al. 2005). In simultaneous morphological processes, two different
operations are involved: stem-internal changes, in which some grammatical features of
the base sign (such as number, person, aspect, direction, movement, rhythm, shape) are
altered and result in a new more complex sign, and modification through
suprasegmental affixation, characterised by the non-manual features of a sign. Given the
features on which these processes apply, their nature is mainly inflectional and,
consequently, productive and pervasive within and across sign languages.
Vermeerbergen, Leeson and Crasborn (2007) account for three categories of
simultaneity in sign languages:
i. Manual simultaneity: it happens when each hand conveys different
information or when stem-internal features of a sign are simultaneously
changed;
31
ii. Manual-oral simultaneity: it refers to the use of mouthing (mouth
patterns derived from spoken language) or mouth gestures (mouth
patterns typical of sign languages) in combination with a manual sign;
iii. Simultaneous use of other articulators: it concerns the use of eye gaze
and body during the articulation of the manual sign.
Sign languages prefer simultaneous operations for modality reasons (Aronoff et al.
2004, 2005): being transmitted by hands, face and body and visually perceived, sign
languages can represent certain spatial and visual concepts, such as source, path, theme,
goal, size, shape, location of the referent, simultaneously in space, in a more direct
manner than spoken languages do. According to Aronoff et al. (2005) “the categories
that are likely to be encoded by complex simultaneous morphology are those whose
real-word simultaneity of occurrence can be represented iconically. […] the iconicity of
these categories accounts for the crosslinguistic similarities among different sign
languages […]” (Aronoff et al. 2005: 13). The authors claim for the universality of the
simultaneous type among sign languages, since it is found in all well-studied sign
languages and it refers to processes of noun (cfr. § 2.4.1 for LIS noun classes) and verb
agreement, adjectival modification and classifier construction (cfr. § 2.4.3 for LIS
classifiers).
Verb agreement is generally taken as a universal example of simultaneous morphology
since all sign languages studied so far10
display three verb classes, first identified and
analysed in ASL by Padden (1983): plain verbs (non-directional), spatial verbs and
agreement verbs (directional). The three classes are differentiated according to the place
of articulation of the verb sign: it can be articulated on the signer’s body or in the space
next to or in front of him (neutral space) as can be seen in Figure 10.
Figure 10. Signing space in front of and next to the signer (van der Hulst, Mills 1996: 14)
10
The reader is referred to Aronoff et al. (2005) and references there cited for details about
works on agreement and verb classes in various sign languages.
32
Plain verbs have invariant beginning and end points, since their form does not change
with respect to the arguments position, whereas spatial and agreement verbs have
beginning and end points determined by spatial referents. The movement of spatial verb
signs defines the movement from one location to another, but it does not define
syntactic arguments. Those defining subject and object are agreement verbs, whose
referents are associated to specific points in the space, as can be seen in Figure 11.
Figure 11. Referents position in the signing space (van der Hulst, Mills 1996: 14)
The points of the neutral space to which referents are associated are R(eferential)-loci
(Lillo-Martin, Klima 1990) and they uniquely identify referents. The points referring to
the subject and object of the verb are connected through verb movement between them:
the beginning of the movement defines the subject, the end defines the object or
addressee. According to Meir (1995, 1998a, 2002) two agreements mechanism are
involved in these constructions:
i. Thematic roles of the arguments determine the direction of the path movement
of agreement verbs: the movement goes from the source to the goal argument;
ii. The syntactic role of the arguments determines the facing of the hands, which is
towards the object of the verb.
Investigations on LIS (Volterra 1987; Pizzuto et al. 1990) have identified three
verbal classes, considering the place of articulation of the verb: (i) verbs articulated on
the signer’s body, (ii) verbs articulated in the neutral space with only one point of
articulation and (iii) verbs articulated in the neutral space with two points of
articulation. The first class concerns verbs produced near or on the signer’s body and
show no overt manual agreement with their arguments, like plain verbs. Figure 12
provides an example.
33
Figure 12. ‘To eat’(Pizzuto 1987: 184)
Another category concerns verb realized in the neutral space in front of the signer with
only one point of articulation. They can agree with only one of their arguments by
changing their point of articulation, and the argument they agree with usually carries
thematic or patient role. Figure 13 is an example of a LIS verb belonging to this
category.
Figure 13. ‘To grow up’(Pizzuto 1987: 190)
A third category includes those defined by Padden (1983) agreement verbs, namely
verbs realised in the neutral space characterised by a movement path combining two
points of articulation. The two points of articulation are related to different discourse
referents, the subject and the object (or the agent and the patient or beneficiary), and the
movement from one position to another allows to specify grammatical relations,
realizing morphological agreement.
Figure 14. ‘To give as a gift’ (Pizzuto 1987: 190)
As can be seen in Figure 14, the sign for the verb ‘to give as a gift’ has a starting point
usually associated to the subject, and an ending point, usually associated to the object.
These verbs show overt agreement with their arguments by altering one or both of their
point of articulation. Verb agreement is also characterised by specific non-manual
34
GAZE i
GAZE i
HEADk
HEADk
markers conveying agreement: the head is tilted towards the position of the signing
space associated with the subject, whereas the gaze is directed towards the position
occupied by the object, as can be seen in the following LIS example11
:
9) GIANNIK MARIAi LOVE
‘Gianni loves Mary’
Moreover, sign languages characterised by a rich inflectional morphology as the one
described above, allow null arguments. LIS, for example, allows both null subject and
object, as can be seen in example 10, which is an example of null subject (pro):
10) pro LOVE MARIAi
‘(he) loves her’
The signs for verbs undergo several morphological markings by changing their
citational form; for example, changing the movement they can convey information
about the length or the duration of the event. Considering Figure 12, the articulation of
the sign EAT with two hands (with the same configuration) and faster movement,
would mean ‘eating a lot very quickly’.
Since three main classes of verbs, two directional and one non directional, have
been found in all well-studied sign languages, Aronoff et al. (2004) claim that verb
agreement is a universal morphological type, since “[…] it is simultaneous, rule-
governed, predictable, productive and universal among sign languages” (Aronoff et al.
2004: 27).
It is simultaneous because it simultaneously defines the arguments’ thematic roles and
morphological agreement through movement direction; rule-governed refers to the strict
principles governing the direction of the path movement that links two R-loci associated
with the subject and object of the verb; productive refers to the nature of the system,
11
In this dissertation I adopt the common notational conventions to transcribe sign language
data: small capitals are used to represent signs (SIGN); lines spreading over signs represent non-manual
markers produced simultaneously to the manual sign(s), and words above them define their function;
subscript letters define co-referentiality of two or more signs in the sentence. English translation is
provided.
35
since all verbs that meet the semantic and phonological conditions for agreement
inflection, inflect and this system applies also to new verbs entering the language. It is
universal because all sign languages investigated display verb agreement and they have
similar realisations.
2.3.2 Sequential morphology
As far as sequential morphological processes are concerned, they constitute a
rarer and less productive class. Sequential compounding seems to be the only sequential
morphological operation that is widespread in sign languages (Stokoe et al. 1965;
Klima&Bellugi 1979; Sandler 1989); usually, an identifiable affix is added to a base
sign, resulting in a complex structure retaining the original hand configuration and place
of articulation of the two morphemes (Aronoff et al. 2005).
Aronoff et al. (2005) and Johnston (2006) account for some examples of these
processes for American Sign Language (ASL), Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and
Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Particularly, in each of the cases considered for
ASL and ISL, the affixes involved correspond to independent words that still exist in
the language.
For example, one of the ways in which ASL realizes negation is through a
negative suffix that usually attaches to verbs. It is a one-handed sign in which the
fingers form the shape of a zero and the hand is moved outward from the signer. The
suffix, meaning ‘not X at all’, is semantically and phonologically similar to a free word
and it is realized with two symmetrical hands. Figure 15 shows the two ASL signs from
which the final one is derived and the affixed form.
36
Figure 15. (a) SEE. (b) Independent word: NONE-AT-ALL. (c) Affixed form: SEE-ZERO ‘not see at all’.
(Aronoff et al. 2004: 22)
The researchers notice that one reason for considering the form a suffix, rather
than an independent word, is that it must occur after, never before, its stem, whereas
free morphemes can occur either before or after verbs. Furthermore, the occurrence of
this suffix in ASL respects a phonological constraint, forcing it to occur only with one-
handed verbs, and a morphological one, restricting its use to plain verbs and prohibiting
to attach to agreeing or spatial verbs.
ISL also provides cases of affixation, in particular it has ‘sense prefixes’, which
are translated by native signers with words that involve a sense organ -eyes, nose or
ears- or the head or the mouth. Aronoff et al. (2004) have discovered over 70 prefixed
forms of this type in ISL and the recurring elements in these forms are affixes rather
than independent words. Again, one reason to consider these forms as affixed
morphemes instead of compound words is that the first morpheme is always one of a
small class of words, typically related to the senses. For this reason, they conclude that
they are dealing with complex words consisting of a prefix and a stem. Figure 16 is an
example of sequential morphology in ISL.
37
Figure 16. (a) SEE. (b) SHARP. (c) Affixed Form: SEE-SHARP ‘discern by seeing’
(Aronoff et al. 2004: 24)
To sum up, the main differences between simultaneous and sequential morphology are:
Simultaneous Sequential
Adds morphological material
changing features of the stem
formational elements
Preferred in sign languages
Both derivational and inflectional
Universal and productive among
sign languages
Related to spatial cognition
Not grammaticized from free
words
Adds morphological material by
adding segments to a stem
Less preferred in sign languages
Only derivational
Sign-language specific (great
variability among SLs)
Tend to be more arbitrary
Grammaticized from free words
Table 1. Simultaneous and sequential morphology
2.3.3 Cuxac (1985, 2000)
As can be inferred from the previous paragraphs, morphological operations
apply to those features of signs that belong both to phonology and morphology. Some
linguists begun to explore whether the origin of signs is phonological or morphological.
Within the morphological tradition, the work by Christian Cuxac (1985, 2000) has
particular relevance, since he proposes a strictly morphological nature of the sign,
negating the existence of a possible phonological one, considering the high iconicity
characterising sign languages. According to Cuxac (1985, 2000) it seems impossible to
38
find a first level without meaning in the unit of a sign: even the smallest parameter of a
sign carries meaning. For this reason, Cuxac considers the so called phonological
parameters as morphemes and points out the important relation between realization and
content, characterised by various degrees of iconicity. His results are fundamental to
discredit the idea that ‘iconic’ means ‘unstructured’. In fact, the fact of breaking down
these structures into compositional morphemes reveals that each part of the body
involved gives its own contribution to meaning formation. He calls these structures
‘Highly Iconic Structures’ (HIS) and highlights that these “[…] structures arise from the
deliberate intent to show, illustrate and demonstrate while telling” (Cuxac, Salandre
2007: 15). Linguists base their considerations on cognitive operations, which they call
‘transfers’, whose aim is to transfer the perceptive/practical experience inside the
signing space, through neural imagery functions. Moreover, Cuxac claims that SLs have
two semiotic dimensions because they provide two ways for conveying meaning: one
consisting in telling and showing, characterised by the use of ‘transfer’ and HIS, and
another one which just tell without showing, using the so called ‘frozen sign’, which are
signs belonging to SLs that have lost their degree of iconicity.
While analysing French Sign Language (LSF), they have individuated three
basic types of transfer: transfer of size and/or form (TF), transfer of situation (TS),
transfer of person (TP). In each of them, eye-gaze plays a crucial role, since it
establishes a relation between the form of the hand configuration in space and the
position which the hand assumes during the articulation of signs. It is eye gaze that
distinguishes the two semiotic dimensions, since when using standard signs, the signer’s
eye-gaze is directed towards the interlocutor, whereas when HIS are used, the signer’s
eye-gaze is concentrated on the hands or it represents the eye-gaze of the entity
involved. The three main types of HIS are (Cuxac 2000; Sallandre&Cuxac 2002;
Sallandre 2003):
i. Transfer of size and/or form: structures used to represent the partial or
total size and/or form of objects, places and characters. As can be seen in
Figure 17, the structure is a combination of dominant and non-dominant
hand configurations, which represent the referent and its positions, and
non-manual features, which convey its size and form. In (17a) the
signer’s inflated cheeks convey the idea of a really big tree trunk,
39
whereas its being really skinny is conveyed in (17c) through puckered
lips and squinting eyes12
; (17b) conveys the tree trunk form.
Figure 17 (a). Begging, middle and end of the tree trunk (Cuxac, Salandre 2007: 16)
Figure 17 (b). Form of the tree trunk, beginning and end. (Cuxac, Salandre 2007: 16)
Figure 17 (c). Position of tree branch, beginning and end. (Cuxac, Salandre 2007: 16)
ii. Transfer of situation: the signer reproduces iconically the scenes
representing the spatial movement of a referent in relation to a stable
locative functioning as a point of reference; in Figure 18, the hands’
configuration represents the referents, whereas the facial expression
conveys the quality of the action.
12
These are examples of processes of augmentation and diminutivisation conveyed through the
combination of classifiers and non-manual markers. The topic will be further developed in § 2.4.4.
40
Figure 18. Two examples of the same situational transfer: a horse jumping over a fence.
(Cuxac, Salandre 2007: 18)
iii. Transfer of person: the signer conveys one or more actions involving his
whole body. The referents are usually human or animal but can also be
inanimate. The narrator becomes the person he/she is talking about. In
Figure 19 the two narrators use both manual and non-manual
configurations to represent the agent, a horse jumping over a fence.
Figure 19. Impersonification of the horse jumping over the fence.
(Cuxac, Salandre 2007: 19)
The structures described above can also combine together to realize what Cuxac
and Sallandre (2007) call combination of transfers; consequently, the final output is
more complex in both structure and function.
2.3.3.1 Role shift
The TP analysed by Cuxac correspond to a particular narrative strategy that in
LIS is commonly called role shift. It constitutes a grammaticalized phenomenon by
which the signer specifies the thematic roles of the narration through eye-gaze and
body-posture. These two non-manual markers are usually called ‘body-markers’ and
constitute the distinctive features of this narrative strategy. In LIS, role shift requires
some specific characteristics in order to be realised (Mazzoni 2008: 65):
41
i. Eye-contact with the interlocutor is interrupted and the signer directs the
gaze towards the point of the space that is associated with the referent
whose identity is temporary assumed;
ii. Facial expression is intensely iconic and represents the referent;
iii. The head is slightly inclined;
iv. All the referents have a precise position within the neutral space, which
becomes a real setting;
v. Body-shift towards the position in space belonging to the represented
referent.
According to Mazzoni (2008) all these features are fixed markers activating role
shift during the narration; however, there is the risk to confuse it with ‘body classifiers’
(BCL), which Mazzoni (2008) defines as a group of classifiers characterised by the use
of the signer’s body for referring to the body of another entity. Mazzoni uses the term
‘body projection (BP)’ to refer to the linguistic use of the body with a classificatory
function. The author points out that, in order to realize body projection, the referent
must necessarily be animate. Even if the BCL greatly recall role shift, they are slightly
different because in role shift, the signer takes the point of view of the referent and he
becomes it, through the use of the body as a classifier, whereas while using the BCL
without role shift, the point of view remains the narrator’s, who uses his body to
describe the point of view of the referent.
The studies by Mazzoni (2008) have been crucial in order to confirm the
richness of sign languages and to stress the fact that an iconic structure is also a fully
complete linguistic structure, since it is characterised by morphemes carrying meaning
and governed by syntactic rules.
The description of Cuxac’s HIS elements and of role shift was needed since they
are involved in evaluative morphology, which characterises the topic of the next
paragraph.
2.4 Evaluative morphology
As briefly mentioned in § 1.6, evaluative morphology mainly refers to processes
of diminutivisation and augmentativisation but it also comprises those morphological
processes conveying emotional overtones of approval and endearment or disapproval
and pejoration.
42
As far as sign languages are concerned, evaluative morphology has not been
fully analysed yet, since the existing studies mainly focus on how to express
intensification and size variation. But evaluative morphology is more than that and in
order to understand it, it is essential to consider the importance and function of non-
manual markers and classifiers.
The discussion will now focus on Italian Sign Language, considering those
elements involved in evaluative morphology and in the modification of the noun phrase.
2.4.1 Italian Sign Language (LIS): a general overview
Italian Sign Language is the language used by the Deaf13
community in Italy.
Linguistic research on LIS is quite recent. The first pioneering studies begun around
1970s and they developed thanks to the enthusiasm and curiosity of a group of
researchers lead by Virginia Volterra: Serena Corazza, Elena Pizzuto and later Elena
Radutzky. They worked at the Department of Psychology of the Centre of National
Research (CNR) in Rome; they met for chance but they all had the desire to discover
and study that ‘system of communication’, used by Deaf people.
Not all of them knew LIS so they first learned it and then they began to analyse
its peculiarities. Different figures were involved in the research: psychologists, linguists,
speech therapists, teachers and, of course, Deaf people. Their preliminary results were
published in the volume La lingua italiana dei segni. La comunicazione visivo-gestuale
dei sordi in 1987. After the presentation of the volume at an International Symposium,
the interest towards Italian Sign Language spread significantly and several associations,
promoting the language and the Deaf Culture, were funded and begun to offer
formational courses for people who wanted to learn LIS. It is thanks to the first
researchers and associations that LIS has spread among the hearing community (even
though it has not received a legal recognition yet).
Years of research (see Caselli et al. 1994 for a panoramic overview) concerning
LIS linguistics has demonstrated its status of language, with a specific phonology,
morphology and syntax.
As for LIS phonological domain, it is common to refer to the phonological
model proposed by Elena Radutzky (1992), which defines four formational parameters:
13
Capitalized letter in the term ‘Deaf’ refers to those deaf people who identify themselves as
members of a signing community and differs from ‘deaf people’ who are deaf but do not use sign
language.
43
i. Configuration: the shape or position that the hand assumes;
ii. Place of articulation: the point in which the sign is articulated. 16 places
of articulation have been identified: 15 on the body and 1 represented by
the neutral space, namely the signing space in front of the signer’s body
(cfr. Figure 10 § 2.3.1). This difference is fundamental and has important
phonological and morphosyntactic consequences: the neutral space is
phonologically undefined but it is morphosyntactically distinctive since it
allows the realisation of morphological processes and syntactic relations
among referents associated to different R-loci (cfr. Figure 11 § 2.3.1),
whereas different points of articulation on the body can provide minimal
pairs (Figure 16 below). Furthermore, signs articulated on the body
undergo movement restrictions whereas signs articulated on the neutral
space can be inflected for number and aspect (verbs and adjectives);
iii. Movement: it refers to the movement of the sign14
. It is crucial for the
realization of verb agreement and to convey lexical and adverbial
information (cfr. § 2.3.1);
iv. Position of the hands: it refers to the position of the hands before starting
the movement. It is the result of the combination of the orientation of the
hands and of the direction of the hands with respect to the signer’s body.
Signs are the simultaneous combination of these four parameters and the variation of
one and only parameter results in a minimal pair, namely couple of signs that share all
parameters except for one. For example, in LIS the sign for SORRY and the sign for
MOTHER differ only for their place of articulation: same configuration ‘A’ with a
twice-tapping movement on the chin for SORRY and near the mouth for MOTHER, as
can be seen in Figure 20.
14
For details about the kind of sign movement in LIS the reader is referred to Radutzky 1992:
1001-8)
44
Figure 20. SORRY MOTHER
( https://www.spreadthesign.com/it)
Italian Sign Language realises its morphological processes in the space: signs
can be modified in their place of articulation, orientation, movement, to express, for
example, agreement, number and aspectual information.
Particularly, the place of articulation determines differences within nominal and
verbal classes (cfr. § 2.3.1).
Pizzuto et al. (1990) and Pizzuto, Corazza (1996) have identified two nominal
classes in LIS: (i) nouns articulated on the signer’s body (invariable), and (ii) nouns
articulated in the neutral space (inflective nouns). These two classes are defined
considering morphological processes, which can be observed for nouns belonging to the
first class but not for invariable nouns. The morphological processes considered are:
marking for numerosity and noun-verb agreement. Inflective nouns can undergo both
processes since their place of articulation and movement can be modified; particularly,
nouns articulated in the neutral space realise the plural through a repeated displacement
of the sign in at least three points (Pizzuto, Corazza 1996), as the following Figure
shows.
Figure 21. TOWN TOWN+++
‘A town’ ‘Many towns’ (Pizzuto, Corazza 1996: 176)
Nouns inflected on the body cannot be inflected in the same way, so they require
the articulation of a lexical modifier in order to express the same concept of numerosity,
as can be seen for the noun WOMAN in Figure 22.
45
Figure 22. WOMAN MANY (Pizzuto, Corazza 1996: 176)
As for noun-verb agreement, modification of the place of articulation conveying
it can only regard inflective nouns. Indeed, invariable nouns realise both numerosity and
agreement in the signing space through classifiers (cfr. § 2.4.3), elements selected from
nouns, which can be displaced and multiplied in the signing place, functioning as
proforms of invariable nouns. Since they are articulated in neutral space, classifiers can
also provide additional semantic and locative information about the noun to which they
are bound and co-referential (Pizzuto, Corazza 1996).
2.4.2 Non-manual markers (NMMs)
Non-manual markers (henceforth: NMMs) are a distinctive feature of sign
languages and comprehend facial expressions (raised or furrowed eyebrows, open or
squinted eyes, inflated cheeks, mouth movements, eye-gaze), head and body
movements (shoulder or chest), interacting with manual signs in the production of the
sentence.
NMMs must be distinguished between linguistic and affective; even if they
concern the same muscles, they are different as far as scope, duration of articulation and
shape are concerned (Baker, Padden 1978; Hickok et al. 1996; Corina et al. 1999;
McCullough et al. 2005). Linguistic NMMs are obligatorily articulated simultaneously
to the manual sign(s) and their activation is regulated by the linguistic system: Broca’s
and Wernicke’s areas of the left hemisphere of the brain (Corina et al. 1999; Denes
2009); instead NMMs with affective function are controlled by the right hemisphere and
they are not obligatory: it is the signer who decides whether and when to use them or
not. The distinction between the affective and linguistic function of NMMs was
provided by some studies concerning deaf aphasic people with injuries to the left
hemisphere (Hickok, Bellugi, Klima 1996; Corina, Bellugi, Reilly 1999). These studies
showed that those patients were no more able to produce syntactic NMMs but their
affective expressions were perfectly mastered. This allowed to demonstrate that the two
types of NMMs are qualitatively different and are controlled by two different systems.
46
Furthermore, since sign languages non-manual markers convey both affective and
linguistic information employing the same visual-gestural channel, they have been
compared to intonation in oral languages (Padden 1990; Reilly, McIntire, Seago 1992;
Nespor and Sandler 1999).
In my dissertation, I will focus on linguistic non-manual markers, which are
generally considered bound morphemes (Liddel 1980; Bickford, Fraychineaud 2006;
Sandler, Lillo-Martin 2006; Tomaszewski, Farris 2010), since they cannot occur alone.
Linguistic NMMs can be further distinguished in lexical, syntactic and adverbial, as far
as their function is concerned, since they play a crucial role in phonology, morphology
and syntax of sign languages.
The first studies analysing linguistic NMMs in LIS are those conducted by
Franchi (1987). Particularly, within the phonological domain, NMMs can distinguish
couples of signs, functioning as a fifth phonological parameter. For example, the Italian
sign WAKE-UP (Figure 23) is produced like the sign AMAZED (Figure 24). They only
differ for the NMMs involved: raised eye-brows and open eyes, during the articulation
of the sign AMAZED, neutral NMMs for the sign WAKE-UP.
Figure 23. WAKE UP
Figure 24. AMAZED (https://www.spreadthesign.com/it/)
In their lexical function, NMMs complete the meaning of the manual sign they co-occur
with; their production is, therefore, obligatory and they can occur only with one sign,
completing its meaning. Franchi (1987) points out that in LIS, signs for emotions and
physical states require to be produced with a specific facial expression or body posture
NMMs
47
completing the meaning of the manual sign (e.g. the sign FAT is characterised by arms
moving away from the body in a round shape and inflated cheeks). The extension of the
non-manual marker over lexical material is called ‘spreading’ (indicated in the glossing
by a line over the sign it is co-articulated with).
Syntactic NMMs differentiate from lexical NMMs as far as occurrence and
function are concerned: they can occur over phrasal domains and they are fundamental
to distinguish constituents (Wilbur 2000) (for example to distinguish the nominal
constituent from the verbal constituent), to mark topicalized constituents and they are
the obligatory markers of different syntactic structures, indicating whether they are a
question, a declarative sentence, a command or a statement.
Bertone (2007, 2010) has individuated a peculiar occurrence of non-manual
markers to distinguish nominal from verbal constituents in LIS; particularly, the author
points out that NMMs marking the nominal constituent (labelled as DP, Determiner
Phrase) are generally characterised by raised eyebrows and the assumption of a slightly
raised position of the head with a jutting forward of the chin, spreading over the lexical
material belonging to this constituent. These NMMs are different from the ones
occurring with the verbal constituent (VP), which are neutral, as can be seen in
examples 11 and 12 (the lines labelled DP or VP indicate the domain over which the
non-manual marking occurs and the manual sign with which it is co-articulated):
11) d. h.: FURNITUREi ANTIQUE
n. d. h. IX----i
‘The furniture is antique’
12) d. h. : FURNITUREi ANTIQUE IXi BROKE
‘The antique furniture is broken’ (Bertone 2010: 8)
In these examples, the NMMs in (11) mark ANTIQUE as being the predicate
while in (12) ANTIQUE is an adjective, belonging to the DP characterised by the noun
and the adjective, both marked by the same NMMs. Moreover, in (11) the two
constituents are further distinguished thanks to the pointing sign (IX in the glosses) that
is the last element of the noun phrase in LIS (Bertone 2010), articulated with the non-
dominant hand (n. d. h.) between the noun and its predicate. Bertone (2007) claims that
VP DP
DP VP
48
the pointing is the phonetic realization of space features, and it is referential because it
realizes the referent of the noun phrase and triggers agreement between the noun and its
modifiers. Therefore, she considers it a determiner inserted in the D head of the DP. On
the other hand, the pointing in (12) is articulated immediately after the adjective because
it refers to the whole NP, composed of the noun and its adjective, marked by the same
NMMs.
Furthermore, syntactic non-manuals play a crucial role in marking the type of
sentence (Cecchetto et al. 2006, 2009; Branchini 2014 for LIS; Pfau, Steinbach 2012;
Liddel 1980; Wilbur 2000 for ASL). As far as LIS is concerned, NMMs distinguish:
i. Wh- questions: they are characterised by the presence of wh- elements
always occurring at the right periphery of the sentence, which are
associated to specific NMMs composed of furrowed eyebrows
obligatorily spreading over the wh- phrase. The wh- phrase can be
subject or object of the sentence: when it is subject, the wh- NMMs may
optionally spread over the whole sentence, whereas when it is object,
NMMs cannot spread over the subject (Cecchetto et al. 2009);
ii. Yes/no questions: NMMs are extended over all signs of the sentence and
they consist of wide open eyes, raised eyebrows, head and shoulders
moved forward (Cecchetto et al. 2009);
iii. Imperative sentences: NMMs are extended all over the articulation of the
sentence and they are characterised by open eyes and furrowed forehead
(Branchini et al. 2013);
iv. Negative sentences: they are characterised by the presence of one
sentence-final negative marker (manual sign) and NMMs composed of
lowered eyebrows and a side-to-side headshake obligatorily occurring
with negative elements; Geraci (2006) observes that negative markers
can occur in argument positions and in those cases NMMs spreads
rightwards;
v. Conditional clauses: NMMs are extended only over the articulation of
the subordinate clause; they are characterised by raised eyebrows, wide
open eyes, tension of the upper-face muscles and forward head tilt
(Franchi 1987);
49
vi. Topicalized phrases: NMMs spread over the topicalized element and
consist of raised eyebrows, wide open eyes and eye-blinking after the
topicalized phrase (Brunelli 2011);
vii. Relative clauses: NMMs spread only over the relative clause and they are
characterised by raised eyebrows, squinted eyes and tensed cheeks
(Cecchetto et al. 2006; Branchini 2007; Branchini, Donati 2009).
NMMs with an adverbial function add adverbial or adjectival information to the
manual sign they are co-articulated with. Figure 26 is an example of NMMs modifying
the sign for the verb ‘to see’: raised eyebrows, head moving backwards and mouth
suddenly opening and letting out air, producing a slight noise corresponding to a
phoneme glossed ‘pa’, add to the verb ‘to see’ (Figure 25) the meaning ‘suddenly’
(Figure 26), therefore the way in which the event described by the verb happens, is
modified by these specific non-manual markers alone, with no further lexical manual
material.
Figure 25. ‘To see’ Figure 26. ‘To see suddenly’ (Branchini 2014: 24)
Interesting NMMs are those involving the mouth; in LIS we find Immagini
Parole Prestate (IPP) (also called spoken components, word pictures or mouthing) and
Componenti Orali Speciali (COS) (also called mouth gestures) (Franchi 1987: 163).
The former consist of mouth patterns usually representing a syllable of the word
of the spoken language, in this case Italian, corresponding to the sign that is being
articulated. Figure 27 provides an example.
50
Figure 27. Example of IPP in LIS. (Franchi 2004: 162):
Figure 27 represents the articulation of the sign TO WORK, which is articulated
with the simultaneous pronunciation of the first phoneme ‘L’ in the Italian word
‘lavorare’; this IPP, which is pronounced without sounds, is fundamental to distinguish
the sign WORK from the sign LOAN, which is instead combined with a peculiar COS
composed of inflated cheek, as can be seen in Figure 28.
Figure 28. Example of COS in LIS (Franchi 2004: 162)
COS are oral components associated with the sign and are completely
independent from the spoken language. Amorini and Lerose (2012) have individuated a
peculiar morphological function of these elements: they are used to modify a referent by
specifying its size and width. As can be seen in Figure 29, the mouth plays a crucial role
in conveying: the idea of something small, with the tongue protruding between the teeth
and squinted eyes in (a); the idea of something of big dimensions through the teeth
biting the inferior lip in (b) and the use of inflated cheeks to describe the generous
quantity of a referent, in (c).
51
Figure 29. (a) the smallest thing (b) the biggest thing (c) abundant entity.
(Amorini, Lerose 2012: 115)
Moreover, Amorini and Lerose (2012) account for the same signs characterised
by different NMMs, conveying minimum and maximum size of an entity (Figure 30).
Figure 30. (a) minimum size. (b) maximum size (Amorini, Larose 2012: 115)
In these cases, size is conveyed through the mouth, which is slightly opened in
(a) with little tongue protrusion, whereas in (b) the maximum size is conveyed through
tensed mouth and cheeks. Another fundamental function of linguistic non-manual
markers is to convey the different degrees of adjectives, as can be seen in Figure 31 and
32, in which the signs are emphasised by enlarging or reducing their articulation and
marking them with NMMs (the ones described above).
Figure 31. ‘big’; ‘very big’ (Franchi 2004: 164)
52
Figure 32. ‘small’; ‘very small’ (Franchi 2004: 164)
As previously mentioned, linguistic NMMs never occur alone since their role is
to modify or complete the meaning of the sign(s) with which they are articulated.
Interestingly, they can occur with both lexical signs or classifiers. Classifiers are
particular linguistic elements that are very productive in sign languages.
2.4.3 Classifiers (CLs)
Although these elements belong to all sign languages and they constitute a very
rich system involving both morphology and syntax, the nature of these elements is not
clear yet. Several studies have analysed classifiers and called them in different ways15
,
but the crucial point is that they agree in defining them as elements which categorize the
noun, functioning as proforms that stand for the noun and share its referential properties
when combined with a predicate. They are generally considered complex predicates
consisting of handshape and movement morphemes, which combine in certain
morphosyntactically constrained ways to express information about certain features of
an entity: the visual-geometric characteristics of an object, its abstract semantic
category, its handling or manipulation. The same noun can be associated with different
classifiers, depending on the context of use and its function.
Even though there is great variability among sign languages concerning these
elements, they are generally divided into four main groups (Sutton-Spence, Woll 1999):
i. Whole entity classifiers: also known as object classifiers or semantic
classifiers, the shape of the hand represents the shape of the referent;
ii. Handling/instrument classifiers: the hand configuration shows how the
object (or part of it) moves or how it is used or handled;
15
The reader is referred to Schembri (2003) for more details about investigations on classifiers in
sign languages.
53
iii. Size and shape specifiers (SASS) (Supalla 1982): they constitute a very
rich class of CLs whose function is to trace the shape of an object.
Supalla claims that they are a group of simultaneous hand-part
morphemes, meaning that each finger is a possible morpheme which can
combine in specific ways to form a handshape. Particularly, classifiers
belonging to this class are distinguished into two groups, as far as shape
is concerned: one group shares the morpheme for ‘straight’, with the
hand extended straight, while the other group shares the morpheme
‘round’ featuring curved fingers;
iv. Body/body part classifiers: the hands or the signer’s body are used to
refer to the body of the referent (or to parts of it).
As far as LIS is concerned, the first systematic analysis of classifiers was
conducted by Corazza (1990), who individuated both classifiers categories and the
semantic elements on which the classifiers are selected. She defines the combination of
movement and hand configuration as a combination of a ‘predicative root’ with a
semantic category. The predicative roots are three:
i. Process root: the movement of the hand corresponds to the movement of
the referent;
ii. Stative/descriptive root: the movement of the hand(s) is necessary to
convey the shape and place of the referent;
iii. Contact root: it defines spatial relations among referents.
These predicative roots iconically select the hand configuration with which they
combine, choosing among five semantic categories:
i. Grab classifiers: define the position and the shape of the hand that is
handling the referent: the grasping hand acts as an instrument or
represents the instrument itself. This class of CLs can only combine with
a process root, they can be articulated on the signer’s body and they
allow other handshapes to be located on them. For example, grabbing a
glass will need the hand-configuration ‘C’ whereas handling a fishing
54
line will be articulated with the ‘T’ hand configuration. Figure 33
provides the hand-configurations belonging to this category:
Figure 33. Grab classifiers (Corazza 1990: 75)
ii. Surface classifiers: the hand configuration describes the surface of the
considered entity; for example, the configuration ‘B’ is proper to define a
wide and smooth entity, like a sheet. These classifiers can combine with
both process and contact roots and can be articulated on the signer’s
body. The relation between the two hands describes the relation between
the two referents involved, e.g. they can represent a surface upon which
other entities can be located. This category comprises various types of
vehicles but it can also represents the number of people. Figure 34
contains a list of handshapes included in this category.
Figure 34. Surface classifiers (Corazza 1990: 77)
55
iii. Descriptive classifiers: the hand selects the proper configuration to
describe the shape and dimension of an entity. This kind of CLs are used
for purely descriptive aims. Classifiers belonging to this class can only
combine with a descriptive root, they can be articulated on the body but
they do not allow any other handshape to be located on them. Figure 35
illustrates the hand-configurations belonging to this category.
Figure 35. Descriptive classifiers (Corazza 1990: 79)
iv. Perimeter classifiers: the hand assumes the shape of the perimeter of the
single entity; these CLs can be combined with process and contact roots
and this characteristic distinguishes them from descriptive classifiers;
moreover, they are different from surface handshapes because they can
be articulated on the body but they do not allow other handshapes to be
located on them.
Figure 36. Perimeter classifiers (Corazza 1990: 80)
v. Quantity classifiers: the hand configuration specifies changes in length,
height or volume of an entity and the change can represent an increase or
a decrease; they can only be used to describe processes (for example, the
56
cigarette getting shorter while smoking), they can be articulated on the
body and they do not allow other handshapes to be located on them.
Figure 37 provides a complete list of these morphemes.
Figure 37. Quantity classifiers (Corazza 1990: 80)
Classifiers are very common among sign languages and, since they are extremely
iconic, they often create neologisms (Johnston, Schembri 1999; Schembri 2003;
Aronoff et al. 2003; Bertone 2008). They function as proforms of the noun with which
they are semantically linked and they are mostly common in descriptions of shape and
size (Corazza 1990). Furthermore, classifiers are fundamental to define spatial relations
among the elements of a sentence and they can be useful to convey plurality of both
invariable and inflective nouns (Pizzuto, Corazza 1996).
LIS has different classes of classifiers (nominal, numeral, locative, deictic and
verbal) but the ones that play a crucial role in the modification of the noun phrase are
nominal classifiers. Nominal classifiers are distinguished from other categories thanks
to non-manuals marking the noun also spreading over the articulation of the classifier.
This is evidence that noun and classifier belong to the same constituent. Indeed, the
classifier specifies several characteristics of the noun with which it co-occurs: shape,
size, dimension but also number and position in space.
Example in 13 is particularly interesting for the characteristics that the classifier
conveys:
57
Open eyes
Teeth biting the inferior lip
Open eyes
Tongue protrusion and squinted eyes
13) BOOK CLfeature of volume+big size MINE
‘The big heavy book is mine’ (Bertone 2007: 40)
The example clearly shows that the classifier conveying features of volume and
size belong to the DP since the NMMs (‘open eyes’) belonging to the noun also spread
over the classifier; but what is worthy mentioning is that the combination of classifier
and non-manual markers convey augmentative features, without the need of producing
an adjective. The same is valid for the diminutive, as can be seen in example 14:
14) CLOCK CLcircular perimeter+small size IX1p GIVE YOU
‘I give you a small circular clock’ (Bertone 2007: 87)
All these elements, classifiers and non-manual markers, are instances of nominal
modification intervening directly on the noun and among their several functions, they
allow processes of augmentation and diminutivisation; for this reason they are elements
belonging to the domain of evaluative morphology.
The next paragraph will consider a very recent but illuminating study about
evaluative morphology in Italian Sign Language, conducted by a group of researchers of
the National Centre of Research (CNR) in Rome.
2.4.4 Evaluative strategies
Given their high degree of iconicity, it is not difficult to imagine the existence of
processes of augmentation and diminutivisation in sign languages, but what is
interesting to examine is how sign languages realize these processes. The most common
strategy is to modify a noun through the articulation of an adjective concerning its
shape, size or volume but these processes do not really belong to evaluative
morphology. As already mentioned in § 1.6, evaluative morphology regards those
processes intervening on the morphology of the noun, modifying it through affixation or
compounding. The elements described in the previous paragraphs represent morphemes
58
combining with a noun and modifying it. Productive strategies of evaluative
morphology in sign languages involve the use of non-manual markers and classifiers.
Particularly, in order to better understand evaluative morphology, it is important to
consider size and shape classifiers and handling classifiers, which can be called
‘interactive handshapes’ (Johnston, Schembri 1999) since “the handshape represents the
hand itself as it either a) grasps, handles, or manipulates objects of certain shapes, or b)
touches and strokes the surfaces, or traces the edges or other physical features of some
real or imaginary object” (Johnston, Schembri 1999: 120).
In their study, Petitta, Di Renzo, Chiari (2015) propose to observe evaluating
functions of augmentation and diminution as governed by three main morphological
strategies:
i. Manual evaluation: it comprehends manual sequential evaluation and
manual simultaneous evaluation.
Manual sequential evaluation consists in the sequence of a canonical sign followed by
specific interactive handshapes indicating the large or small size of an entity. This
interactive handshape, namely the classifier, is often marked by specific non-manual
markers and it is considered a bound morpheme since it co-occur with the sign for the
noun. Examples of this kind are very common in sign languages. Figure 38 and 39 are
examples of processes of augmentation and diminutivisation through interactive
classifiers:
Figure 38. MOSQUITO CLsize
‘The mosquito is very big’ (Amorini, Leorse 2012: 115)
As the image clearly shows, the classifier of size (on the right) articulated after
the sign for the noun (on the left), is marked by the specific non-manual markers
identified by Amorini and Lerose as specific markers of augmentation: open eyes and
teeth biting the inferior lip (cfr. § 2.4.2).
NMMs
59
NMMs
Figure 39. PHONE CLsize
‘The phone is small’(Amorini, Leorse 2012: 115)
Figure 39 is an example of diminutivisation and it clarifies the strict relation
between classifiers and non-manual markers in order to convey diminutive and
augmentative features: by comparing Figure 38 with Figure 39 we can see that the
classifier used to convey size is the same, but the opposite meaning, ‘very big’ in (38)
and ‘very small’ in (39), is conveyed through different NMMs occurring over them.
Features conveying diminutives are expressed through the mouth slightly opened with
little tongue protrusion.
Manual simultaneous evaluation, instead, refers to the modification of the sign
through the modification of its manual features: movement, handshape or location,
which can be enlarged or reduced. An interesting peculiarity of these structures is that
they are generally not preceded by the canonical sign since the modification occurs
directly on the sign for the noun, as can be seen in Figure 40.
Figure 40. a) TIE b)TIE c)TIE
‘tie’ ‘big tie’ ‘small tie’
(Petitta, Di Renzo, Chiari 2015: 160)
NMMs
NMMs
60
NMMs
Figure 40 shows that the sign for TIE is modified to convey the idea of a bigger
and a smaller tie: the bigger tie (Figure 40b) is characterised by an enlarged handshape
referring to the handling pattern and the typical NMMs for augmentation: open eyes and
teeth biting the inferior lip; the smaller tie (Figure 40c) is articulated trough a different
handshape, the ‘Ḟ’ configuration, which is generally used for little and thin entities, and
the NMMs of tongue protrusion typical of diminutive features.
Interestingly, Petitta, Di Renzo, Chiari (2015) notice that these processes of
augmentation and diminutivisation can be also applied to abstract entities: Figure 41
shows the difference between the canonical sign for PROJECT (on the left) and the sign
conveying the idea of a big project (on the right), which is modified by enlarging the
sign articulation and slowing down its movement:
Figure 41. PROJECT PROJECT
‘project’ ‘big project’ (Petitta, Di Renzo, Chiari 2015: 161)
Moreover, ASL and ISL provide examples of manual simultaneous evaluation to
modify the connotation of a colour: the sign for BLUE, for example, is articulated with
reduced movements in order to convey the meaning ‘BLUISH’. In this example, the
modification does not regard features of size or shape but it rather conveys a negative
judgment with respect to the colour. It is an example of the process involved in
conveying pejorative features.
ii. Non-manual simultaneous evaluation: co-occurrence of additional or
modified non-manual features.
Non-manual simultaneous evaluation is a strategy for conveying features of
diminutive and augmentative consisting in the direct modification of the manual sign
through non-manual features. As already mentioned in the previous paragraphs, these
NMMs, which are mainly characterised by facial expressions, are obligatory present
when adjectives such as big, large, small, etc. are articulated since NMMs have the
lexical function to complete their meaning (if the adjectives occurred unmarked, they
61
would result in ungrammaticality). When evaluative features are conveyed trough the
direct modification of the base sign form (occurring without adjectives), NMMs
perform an adjectival function, which is not obligatory but it depends on the meaning
the signer wants to convey, adding meaning of ‘smallness’ or ‘bigness’ to the base sign
form. These processes of simultaneous evaluative morphology are greatly attested
among sign languages. Notably, Italian Sign Language has different ways to convey the
same features; as fare as ‘small’ is concerned, it can be conveyed through: mouth
protrusion, sucked-in cheeks, forward protruded closed lips or half-protruding tongue;
on the other hand, the idea of ‘big’ can be conveyed through puffed cheeks, teeth biting
the inferior lip, slightly grinding teeth or half-frown mouth. Once again it is important
to highlight the crucial role of mouth gestures expressing the evaluative function of
‘big’ and ‘small’, as defined by Amorini and Lerose (2012).
Petitta, Di Renzo and Chiari (2015) increase the knowledge about the function of
mouth gestures claiming that they are also employed in evaluative expressions related to
endearment and contempt. To be explicit, they say that “facial expressions usually
associated with canonical forms meaning ‘disgust’, ‘refuse’, ‘disease’ (as obligatory
features of the lexical unit) can develop functional evaluative roles when co-occurring
with illustrative signs and HIS, adding evaluation in the negative pole” (Petitta, Di
Renzo, Chiari 2015: 165). Furthermore, they have identified mouth protrusion co-
occurring with head tilt and narrow eyes as NMMs conveying endearment features.
Interestingly, endearment NMMs can be also associated to interactive classifiers
referring to something small, but they are referred to as affective non-manuals that are
not systematically used and, according to the authors, they can hardly be assigned to the
domain of morphology but rather they resemble paralinguistic features of oral
languages.
Personally, on the basis of Cinque’s (2015) typological study and considering
that the occurrence of these specific NMMs modifies the meaning of the citational sign,
I disagree and consider them as morphemes with a defined linguistic function, and I will
account for this claim with examples provided by four Deaf people who are LIS native
signers (cfr. Chapter 3).
iii. Reduplicative evaluation (sequential and simultaneous): it consists in the
partial or full reduplication of the sign or a portion of it, with eventual
variation in manual patterns.
62
NMMs
It is well known that sign languages are redundant languages, since they often
display patterns of repetition and reduplication of signs or concepts. Reduplication, for
example, is mainly used to convey plurality (Pizzuto, Corazza 1996; Sandler, Lillo-
Martin 2006) whereas repetition has mainly the adverbial function to convey how the
action described by the verb is happening (Corazza 2000b). As far as evaluative
morphology is concerned, the use of reduplication has been identified as a
morphological mean of intensification, which is very common among sign languages.
Particularly, Petitta, Di Renzo, Chiari (2015) have individuated a systematic typology of
evaluative reduplication consisting in partial or full reduplication of a sign: sequential
reduplication. The duplicated portion of the sign can be both form-preserving, if it is
exactly like the sign, or form-changing, if the movement of articulation of the second
sign is enlarged, or reduced. By doing so, reduplication becomes a strategy of manual
simultaneous evaluation, which is mostly used to express augmentation and
intensification and it applies to canonical sign forms and to interactive classifiers. These
sequences of canonical and modified signs are characterised by a base sign referring to
the whole shape of the referent and by the copy of the base sign which can be
articulated with a different handshape but with the same movement patterns, reduced or
expanded in the signing space. Notably, both the sign in the canonical form and the
modified one are marked by specific NMMs dedicated to diminutive and augmentative
features. Figure 42 is an example of reduplicative evaluation.
Figure 42. TABLE + TABLE
‘big table’ (Petitta, Di Renzo, Chiari 2015: 166)
All the strategies belonging to evaluative morphology described so far can be used for
both the evaluation of size and shape qualities and to convey more subjective
perspectives of endearment or contempt.
63
To sum up, evaluative morphology, namely that subtype of morphology
conveying diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features, in Italian Sign
Language is a composition of manual-oral simultaneous morphology since it concerns
the combination of different elements: nouns, classifiers and non-manual markers.
These constructions have been described with different names (transfer of size and
form, HIS, COS, size and shape classifiers, evaluative strategies) but the features
characterising them are the same. Even though these features are described, at least
mentioned, in the literature concerning LIS, there is some confusion and a clear and
systemized description is missing. In the following table I have collected the
characteristics described so far and in the next chapter I will provide an account for
these features thanks to the experimental collection and analysis of the productions of
four LIS native signers.
Table 2. Evaluative strategies in LIS
Evaluative process Characteristics
Diminutivisation Restricted articulation of the sign or
occurrence of a classifier defining smaller
size and shape; the typical NMMs,
occurring on both the noun alone or upon
the noun and its relative classifier are:
narrow eyes, mouth/tongue protrusion;
Augmentation Enlarged articulation of the sign or
occurrence of a classifier defining bigger
size and shape; the typical NMMs,
occurring on both the noun alone or upon
the noun and its relative classifier are:
open eyes, puffed cheeks/teeth biting the
inferior lip, slightly grinding teeth or half-
frown mouth;
Endearment It consists in specific NMMs mainly
associated with diminutivisation
processes. The NMMs involved are:
mouth protrusion co-occurring with head
tilt and narrow eyes;
Pejoration It can occur with both processes of
augmentation and diminutivisation and
the NMMs involved are the ones usually
associated with canonical forms
conveying disgust, refuse and disease.
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Now that the picture of LIS elements belonging to evaluative morphology is complete,
the dissertation goes on with the description of another meaningful element involved in
the modification of the nominal phrase, namely the adjective, in order to analyse its
occurrence with respect to the one of classifiers and NMMs and its role as far as
evaluative functions are concerned.
2.5 LIS adjectives
Following the studies about ASL adjectives conducted by Klima, Bellugi (1979)
and Mac Laughlin (1997), Bertone (2007) claims that, like nouns and verbs, LIS
adjectives must be distinguished between inflective (also called agreeing adjectives by
Bertone 2010:10), those articulated in the neutral space, and uninflective (or non-
agreeing), namely those realized on the signer’s body. According to Bertone (2007),
morphological agreement between the noun and the adjective is realized in the neutral
space and involves the modification of the features of space and orientation of the hand.
For inflective adjectives, agreement is accomplished when the adjective is realized in
the same point of articulation of the noun, whereas with uninflective adjectives
agreement is realized by body or head tilt, which often involves eye gaze turning
towards the point indicated by the determiner or by the noun (or its related classifier)
articulated in a specific point of the signing space. The author observes that Italian Sign
Language adjectives can be inflected for both aspect and intensity, which mainly consist
in the modification of the sign articulation (reduced or enlarged), its duration, specific
NMMs and repetition of the sign conveying the adjective. For example, LIS expresses
the superlative form of an adjective through specific NMMs: example 15 shows that the
superlative form of the adjective BIG is characterised by dedicated NMMs consisting
in: open mouth and wide eyes and by a wider articulation of the sign (cfr. Figure 31 §
2.4.2).
15) VASE BIG
‘A very big vase’ (Bertone 2007: 69)
Adjectives belonging to the nominal constituent are marked by specific NMMs
which are articulated over the sign for the noun and then spread also over the
articulation of the adjective. According to Bertone (2007), if the adjective has an
attributive function it cannot be separated from the noun by inserting other lexical
NMMs
65
material between the two; if it has a predicative function, it is characterised by more
salient facial expressions such as squinted eyes or raised eyebrows, which are more
emphasised compared to the expression of the whole DP (Bertone 2007). Moreover, it is
possible to have a pause after the predicative adjective. According to Bertone (2007,
2010) this distinction is fundamental since she claims that both attributive and
predicative adjectives occur in postnominal position in LIS. Example 16 provides an
instance of this distinction.
16) ICE CREAM GOOD, ITALIAN COST MORE
‘A good ice cream that is Italian, costs more.’ (Bertone 2010: 12)
In (16) the adjective ITALIAN is in bold because it is prosodically marked and a
pause intervenes between the two adjectives, marking their different functions: GOOD
is an attributive adjective whereas ITALIAN is the predicative one, since its NMMs are
stressed, hence they are more intense. Moreover, attributive adjectives are examples of
direct modification while predicative adjectives are instances of indirect modification,
since they are marked by the same NMMs belonging to the relative clause, as can be
seen in example 17.
17) DRESS RED IX1p+2p YESTERDAY SEE CLnum+position, IX1p BUY DONE
‘The red dress that we saw yesterday among the others, I bought it’
(Bertone 2010: 13)
Bertone (2010) points out some elements useful to identify predicative
adjectives as instances of indirect modification: they are preceded by an intonation
pause, their NMMs are identical to the ones marking relative clauses, there is the
Dimpled cheeks
Squinted eyes
Or squinted eyes
Eyebrows more raised
Non manual expression of DP
66
possibility of PE16
insertion, they have a restrictive reading and they are not subject to
the ordering restriction of direct modification (Sproat&Shih 1990; Scott 2002).
The distinction between direct and indirect modification has been theorised by
Cinque (2010: 25), through the analysis of semantic and syntactic characteristics of
these two classes of nominal modifiers in English and Italian. For instance, adjectives of
the direct modification type are (Cinque 2010: 27):
i. Non-restrictive: the adjective refers to the entire group of elements
without restrictions;
ii. Non-intersective: it has an adverbial interpretation;
iii. Individual level reading: the adjective describes a stable and permanent
property;
iv. Nearer to the noun: functional projections hosting attributive adjectives
belong to the lower part of the syntactic structure, for this reason they are
nearer to the noun;
v. Strictly hierarchically ordered: functional projections hosting this type of
adjectives are strictly ordered, as pointed out by Scott (2002) and Cinque
(1994) (cfr. § 1.5).
On the other hand, indirect modification adjectives are (Cinque 2010: 27):
i. Restrictive: they refer to a limited subgroup of entities;
ii. Intersective: the adjective intersects the entire set of properties which it
identifies with the semantic sphere belonging to the referent;
iii. Stage-level reading: they describe temporary and transitory properties;
iv. Derived from reduced relative clauses: indirect modification adjectives
share semantic and syntactic properties with predicative adjectives
belonging to reduced relative clauses;
v. Farer from the noun: they belong to the higher portion of the syntactic
structure;
vi. Not rigidly ordered: they do not have to occur in some defined order.
16
PE is a sign that is coreferential with an NP within the clause and it occurs in several syntactic
constructions in LIS. For further details the reader is referred to Cecchetto et al. (2006) and Branchini,
Donati (2009).
67
Considering all these properties, Cinque (2010) proposes two different structural
sources, as represented in Figure 43.
Figure 43. Structural position of direct and indirect modification (adapted from Cinque 2010: 25)
As can be inferred by Figure 43, the functional projections hosting features of
evaluative morphology, namely diminutive, augmentative endearment and pejorative,
are comprised between two functional projections hosting attributive adjectives: APvalue
and APsize. For this reason, I will now concentrate the attention on the order of direct
modifiers.
Bertone (2007, 2010), through the analysis of some LIS examples, concludes
that the order of attributive adjective is: origin>colour>shape>size>value, which is
exactly the opposite of the universal one.
18) origin>colour: VASE CHINA RED
*VASE RED CHINA
19) origin>value: VASE CHINA OLD
*VASE OLD CHINA
20) colour>value: VASE RED OLD
*VASE OLD RED (Bertone 2010: 17)
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The fact that all attributive adjectives are postnominal in LIS is justified with two main
considerations: following Cinque (2005a), Bertone considers adjectives to be phrases
generated in the specifiers of distinct functional projections between DP and NP;
furthermore, the position of the noun is derived through movement of the ‘whose
picture-type’ of the NP (cfr. § 1.4.1), which lands in the specifier positions of the AgrPs
dominating the functional projections (FPs) hosting the different kinds of adjectives,
and moves towards the SpecDP position where it will check features of space and
referentiality.
As far as the other meaningful elements are concerned, according to Bertone
(2010) the unmarked order in LIS is: N>A>Num>Dem, as example 21 shows.
21) BOOK NEW TWO IXi MINE
‘These two new books are mine’ (Bertone 2010: 22)
The other orders attested, N>Num>A>Dem, Dem>N>A>Num>index,
Dem>N>Num>A>index, are claimed to be infrequent and to require additional prosodic
marking mainly consisting in tensed cheeks and raising eyebrows. Examples 22, 23, 24
provide an example for each order:
22) BOOK TWO NEW IXi, MINE
23) IXi BOOK NEW TWO IXi, MINE
24) IXi BOOK TWO NEW IXi, MINE (Bertone 2010: 22,23)
Even though Bertone (2007, 2010) claims that both attributive and predicative
adjectives are postnominal in LIS, Mantovan (2015) in a later work accounts for a
greater variability concerning the order of adjectives with respect to the noun and she
claims that this variability is regulated by syntactic constraints.
First of all, Mantovan (2015) has considered a larger amount of data, coming
from Deaf informants of different ages and geographical areas. She analysed data from
three different tests, free narration, acceptability judgements and narration tasks, in
order to have the possibility to analyse both corpus and elicited data. She obtained
DP
DP
DP
DP
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interesting results: the most frequent order observed was noun>modifier (1216 tokens,
60%), but the second most frequent option was modifier>noun (692 tokens, 34%). This
second result was too large to be considered a marginal aspect of LIS so Mantovan
deepened the analysis considering the order of distribution with respect to the type of
modifiers classified according to Cinque’s (2005a) hierarchy and she found that “[…]
modifiers occurring in the lowest and highest positions of Cinque’s hierarchy tend to
occur in postnominal position, while modifiers occurring in the central part of Cinque’s
hierarchy tend to be prenominal […]” (Mantovan 2015: 152). She has identified five
effects, two linguistic, two socio-linguistic and one interaction, determining variability
in the order N/modifiers: modifier type, in-between signs, age, family and modifier
type.
Specifically, the most frequent patterns resulting from corpus data are: N>Dem,
Num>N, N>A. Capturing them into two orders, she found that the pattern N>A>Dem
was more frequent (18 occurrences) than N>Dem>A, as the following examples show.
25) a. PERSON HEARING IX
‘the/this hearing person’
b. NEPHEW DEAF IX
‘the/this Deaf nephew’
c. ASSOCIATION NEW IX
‘the/this new association’ (Mantovan 2015: 76)
From these examples, Mantovan inferred that the most frequent macro-
typological order characterising the nominal domain in LIS is: Num>N>A>Dem. She
proposes a three-type NP movement to explain this order: a “simple NP movement
derives the noun>modifier order for the lower projections of the hierarchy. The
modifier>noun order for projections sitting in the central part of the hierarchy is derived
by simple merge of these projections without any syntactic movement. The
noun>modifier order of the higher part of the hierarchy is derived by pied-piping of the
‘picture of whom’ type” (Mantovan 2015: 177). This complex movement is in line with
the options provided by Cinque’s (2005a) and it shows that Greenberg’s Universal 20 is
consistent in LIS too. Figure 44 illustrates this syntactic derivation.
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Figure 44. Syntactic derivation of the order Num>N>A>Dem (Mantovan 2015: 178)
Mantovan’s results are quite different from Bertone’s but she thinks that it is
because the informants involved in Bertone’s research were younger, which means that
they show a preference for the postnominal order of modifiers. Indeed, Mantovan has
considered ‘age’ as a sociolinguistic variable responsible for postnominal orders:
signers born before 1945 prefer postnominal modifiers, those born between 1945 and
1965 show a preference for prenominal position whereas signers born after 1965
significantly prefer postnominal modifiers.
Mantovan’s research is a great contribution to linguistic research since it has
demonstrated that even a mixed language like LIS is regulated by syntactic constraints
and it follows Greenberg’s Universal 20. LIS variability can be explained considering
the fact that it is a relatively young language with no standard form or official status but
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the process of standardisation is developing and it is confirmed by the preference of
younger signers for the same regularities.
Keeping in mind these results, I will now consider a peculiar type of nominal
modification, namely the one characterised by classifiers functioning as adjectives,
since they play a crucial role within the domain of evaluative morphology, as it will be
further explained in Chapter 3.
2.5.1 Adjectives realized through classifiers
As it has been said § 2.4.3, classifiers are peculiar elements of sign languages
belonging to the extended projection of the NP, which are essential in conveying several
features of the noun, such as: its position in the neutral space (for invariable nouns), its
relation with other elements; particularly, classifiers can convey features of shape and
size without the presence of an adjective, as examples (13) and (14) of § 2.4.3 showed.
Indeed, in LIS, nominal classifiers are selected on the base of the shape of the noun with
which they are co-articulated and they categorize it through the definition of its
semantic features. Specifically, classifiers functioning as adjective are those regarding
the size, shape and volume of the noun and, as examples (13) and (14) confirm, they
also allow for processes of diminutivisation and augmentation.
Bertone (2007) makes an interesting observation, namely the fact that when
classifiers convey features of size, shape and volume they could be homophone to
adjectives, leading to confuse them and interpret classifiers as adjectives or vice versa.
But their difference is defined thanks to their position and the possibility, belonging
only to classifiers, to be reduplicated when referring to more entities. Let’s consider the
following examples by Bertone (2007).
26) VASE CLfeature of shape (two hands articulation) A LOT
‘A lot of rounded vases’
27) VASE CLfeature of shape (two hands articulation)+++ A LOT
‘A lot of rounded vases’ (Bertone 2007: 115)
In examples (26) and (27) the classifiers are identical as far as the manual articulation is
concerned, but they are different syntactic elements: in (26) it is an adjective whereas in
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(27) it is a classifier since it can be reduplicated. Another way to distinguish a classifier
incorporating features of size and shape from an adjective is by inserting a numeral
adjective, as in example 28.
28) HOUSE BIG FOUR CL CLfeature of shape+feature of disposition +++
‘Four big houses’ (Bertone 2007: 116)
Example 28 shows that the adjective must occur before the numeral, which must
be before the classifier. If the numeral preceded the adjective, the sentence would be
ungrammatical. Proximity to the noun in the produced sentence means occupying a
lower position within the syntactic structure. From the examples analysed so far, the
order of adjective, numeral and classifier seems to be: Adjective>Numeral>Classifier.
By considering the fact that classifiers can convey the plural form of the nouns
they describe, Bertone (2007) has also analysed the position of the classifier with
respect to the position of the functional projection (within the extended projection of the
NP) hosting number features. Ritter (1991) has proposed that number features are
codified in the head of the functional projection NumberP and they are incorporated in
the noun while it climbs up the structure landing in the different SpecAgr positions
dominating the several FPs between DP and NP.
According to Bertone (2007), LIS realises number inflection in two ways: if the
noun refers to a long entity, the number features are incorporated in the classifier,
whereas with other entities, the plural is conveyed through reduplication of the noun or
of the classifier. (29) through (31) provide an example of each type.
29) d.h. MAN CLlong entity+plural+definite location
n. d. h. CLlong entity+plural+definite location WAIT
‘Many men are waiting’
30) BOOK CLfeature of shape+feature of disposition+++ MINE
‘These books are mine’
31) PERSON++++ WAIT
‘People are waiting’ (Bertone 2006: 119)
DP
DP
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By adding a numeral and an adjective to example (30), we obtain the order of numeral,
number, adjective and classifier:
32) BOOK RED THREE CLfeature of shape+feature of disposition+++ MINE
‘These three red books are mine’
As previously mentioned, Bertone (2007) assumes for LIS the NP movement of
the ‘picture-of-whom’ type proposed by Cinque (2005a), therefore the NP moves higher
up in the syntactic structure pied-piping the several functional projections dominating
it: firstly the NP pied-pipes the FPs hosting adjectives, then it pied-pipes NumeralP and
DemonstrativeP respectively. If the NP also pied-piped the Classifier Phrase (CLP), the
resulting order would be N>Adjective>Classifier>Numeral but this would lead to
ungrammaticality in LIS.
For instance, Bertone assumes the position of Simpson (2005) who claims, for
Thai language, that the numeral and classifier position are fixed, so the LIS order
N>A>Numeral>Classifier>Number is justified if both the classifier and number
features remain in situ. I provide in Figure 45 a tentative structure of the extended
projection of the NP17
displaying the order of the functional projections discussed
above, integrating the FP hosting meaningful elements with those hosting evaluative
features in their head positions.
Figure 45. Partial map of the extended projection of the NP.
17
AgrPs dominating the several FPs and the other levels of the FPs have been omitted for reason
of space.
DP
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This order confirms that the extended projection of the NP proposed by Cinque (2012)
and the relative NP movement account for LIS too, increasing the validity of the
Cartographic Approach and the universality of the syntactic structure.
Notably, according to Bertone (2007) in LIS the NP climbs up the syntactic
structure to reach the position SpecDP with all its modifiers (adjectives, classifiers and
features of number) to check features of referentiality, namely features of space,
contained in D°.
Considering this kind of movement and the elements they modify (cfr. § 2.4.2,
2.4.3, 2.4.4), I propose that NMMs conveying diminutive, augmentative, endearment
and pejorative features can be considered morphemes hosted in the head positions of
AugP, PejP, DimP and EndP, since the NP incorporates them while climbing up. This
hypothesis will be further investigated in Chapter 3 thanks to the analysis of the
productions of four LIS native signers.
2.6 Conclusions
The first chapter ended with the positioning of the functional projections hosting
diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features in the syntactic structure,
specifically within the extended projection of the NP. This chapter has dealt with
Morphology and in particular with Evaluative Morphology in Italian Sign Language.
The first paragraph has showed how important sign languages are for linguistic
research, since they can be both compared to spoken languages and be individually
analysed in order to gain greater knowledge about the language faculty. A description of
sign language typology in this domain has been preparatory to the description of sign
language morphological processes, especially those regarding evaluative morphology.
Consequently, I have illustrated the characteristics of the LIS elements involved in
evaluative strategies, namely non-manual markers and classifiers. To complete the
picture, I have also referred to attributive adjectives in order to be able to sketch the
order of all these elements within the extended projection of the noun phrase, that is:
Providing the complete order of these elements has been fundamental to observe the
movement of the NP and how it affects its modifiers since the NP incorporates
diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features while climbing up the
DP>NumP>ClP>Num°>APvalue>Aug°>Pej°>Dim°>End°>APsize>APshape>APcolour>APnation>NP
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syntactic tree. From the examples presented in this chapter, it can be seen that NMMs
conveying these features mark both the noun and its modifiers so I have proposed to
consider them as morphemes hosted in the head positions of dedicated functional
projections, assuming that the order of these FP proposed by Cinque’s (2015) could
account for LIS too.
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CHAPTER 3
A descriptive account
3.1 Introduction
The present chapter gets to the heart of the matter since it offers a description of
evaluative morphology processes in Italian Sign Language. The second chapter has
offered a panoramic view of the existing studies, this chapter wants to provide a
description coming from the direct observation of how LIS behaves when evaluative
morphology is concerned. Considering the lack of a systematic description of the
realisation of diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features in LIS, this
chapter is quite innovative and it is an attempt to observe whether the existing studies in
this domain are complete. The desire to provide new evidence of the phenomenon has
been the starting point of my research, together with the curiosity to discover whether
features of evaluative morphology display the same behaviour in LIS with respect to
their characteristics in oral languages. The chapter is organised as follow: § 3.2 presents
the considerations which led me to the development of this research; § 3.3 concerns the
first part of my research, namely the Fairy Tales Corpus, whose data analysis and
preliminary results are provided in § 3.3.1 and § 3.3.2 respectively. The collection of
elicited data, characterising the second stage of my research, is presented in § 3.4 and
three tasks are discussed in § 3.4.1 (picture naming task), § 3.4.2 (narration task) and §
3.4.3 (grammaticality judgements). The summary of the results and other considerations
are provided in § 3.5.
3.2 Methodological issues
I developed the curiosity for evaluative morphology in LIS during the course in
Advanced Syntax that I attended the first year of my Master’s Degree; Professor
Guglielmo Cinque presented his recent results concerning the order of the functional
projections hosting diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features in
their head positions (cfr. § 1.6) within the extended projection of the NP and I realized
that I had never read anything about this topic in LIS before. I started thinking that
given its great iconicity, LIS, as any sign language, should also be endowed with those
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features, and I asked myself: “how would LIS display them? Do they have a defined
and regular status? Do they respect the universal order proposed by Cinque (2015)?”
I formulated some hypotheses considering the characteristics of LIS, some of
which could be involved in conveying evaluative features:
i. Modifications, if present, will concern noun morphology intervening on
the articulation of the sign, which will be reduced or enlarged to convey
augmentative and diminutive features;
ii. Non-manual markers will be mostly involved in the realisation of
endearment and pejorative features, modifying the sign with which they
are articulated;
iii. Large use of classifiers, especially involved in the modification of nouns
realised on the body;
iv. Role shift could be used to convey more features together.
After having formulated the hypotheses, I examined the existing studies
concerning this topic and I learnt that evaluative strategies do exist in Italian Sign
Language, even though their description is scattered and slightly approximate. As
mentioned in Chapter 2, the main elements involved in evaluative strategies are non-
manual markers and classifiers. Consequently, bearing in mind that evaluative strategies
belong to the domain of morphology, I had to develop a research that helped me to
examine the changes in the morphology of the sign to convey diminutive, augmentative,
endearment and pejorative features.
To this end, I have elaborated a protocol to collect data that could be suitable to
develop a qualitative analysis, in order to provide a description of each feature. To this
purpose, my research has been divided into two stages: first I have analysed a
naturalistic corpus of 22 fairy tales produced by three LIS native signers in Italian Sign
Language, then I have examined the productions of other three LIS native signers,
involved in three elicited tasks sentence production: picture-naming, narration and
grammaticality judgements. The first stage has been useful to attest the presence of
diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features in LIS, but since the
context was restricted to fairy tales, the second stage was needed to examine evaluative
strategies in productions involving daily situations.
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3.3 The Fairy Tales Corpus
For the first stage of my research, I analysed 22 fairy tales: 20 realized by
Claudio Baj in collaboration with Cooperativa ALBA Onlus (Torino) and 2 realised by
other two LIS native signers: Gabriele Caia and Gabriella Grioli.
Claudio Baj is 46 years old and he is from Turin. In 1995 he won the ‘Robert
Wirth’ scholarship which allowed him to study ‘Deaf children education’ at the
Gallaudet University in Washington D. C.. He is teacher of Italian Sign Language and
responsible of the formation of LIS Interpreters and Communication Assistants since
1993. He mainly works in Piemonte, where he has been President of the two most
important organizations of the area: Cooperativa DIRE and Cooperativa ALBA. He is
now an employee of Cooperativa ALBA and works as Deaf Actor for an European
Project involving the University of Turin and as LIS expert at the Scuola Bilingue in
Cossato (BI). The corpus of fairy tales that he realized in LIS comprehends both tales
belonging to the Oral Culture and less common tales, mainly known by the Deaf
Community. I used these tales for the first stage of my research and their titles are:
1. L’albero segnante
2. Riccioli d’oro
3. La lepre e la tartaruga
4. La volpe e la cicogna
5. Drillo, piccolo coccodrillo
6. Tobia
7. La cicala e la formica
8. Quando arriva la
primavera?
9. Cenerentola
10. Il tonno e il delfino
11. Giacomino e il fagiolo
magico
12. Il corvo e la volpe
13. Il cane e la lepre
14. Biancaneve e i 7 nani
15. La guardian delle oche
16. La donnola e il gallo
17. I tre porcellini
18. Cappuccetto Rosso
19. Il gatto con gli stivali
20. Hansel e Gretel
The other two fairy tales18
are:
18
These two fairy tales are both accessible on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gQ-5I0q_uE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlGFKGd5n9Y
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21. Cenerentola Sorda 22. Stella
Cenerentola Sorda is realised by Gabriele Caia (see § 3.4) whereas Stella was produced
by Mason Perkins Deafness Fund Onlus (Siena) and realised by Gabriella Grioli, a
young Deaf girl. The three informants are all Deaf people involved in the promotion and
study of Italian Sign Language and they use it as everyday language communication;
they are fully aware of the linguistic status of LIS, so they appeared the perfect
candidates for my analysis.
I thought that fairy tales could be the proper material to begin my research with,
since they are known as being particularly iconic and they could display plenty of
evaluative strategies. Considering the evaluative strategies identified by Petitta et al.
(2015) (cfr. § 2.4.4) I watched the tales many times and selected some interesting
elements.
3.3.1 Collection and analysis of data
Firstly, I watched all the fairy tales in order to have a panoramic idea and then I
began to watch each one singularly, paying particular attention to those passages in
which evaluative strategies cold be used. For the purpose of my research, I considered
those signs referring to the semantic fields involved in evaluative morphology, namely
the ideas of ‘small’, ‘big’, ‘nice/lovely’ and ‘bad/ugly’, and those passages in which
contempt or sentiments of affection were conveyed. Even though evaluative
morphology regards those processes intervening on the noun morphology to convey
diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features, without the occurrence
of adjectives, I also extrapolated those nouns modified by adjectives such as: lovely,
nice, dear, kind, ugly, bad, ruined, poor, big, huge, small and little, since they refer to
the same semantic fields I mentioned above, in order to compare the different contexts
of use. Moreover, I considered occurrences of role shift only when they conveyed the
features in question. Obviously, I paid great attention to those NMMs that have been
individuated from the existing literature as belonging to evaluative morphology (cfr. §
2.4.4), reported below:
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During the annotation phase, I stopped the video when I individuated a meaningful
production and I annotated the relative gloss in a spreadsheet file in Excel. The glosses
were associated with the screenshots of the signer articulating them. Then, I have
divided the extrapolated elements into six categories, namely:
i. N : nouns conveying diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative
features through specific NMMs occurring simultaneously to their articulation,
without the need of classifiers or other modifiers. I also considered those nouns
displaying modifications in their articulation, which was reduced or enlarged, to
convey diminutive and augmentative features;
ii. CL: classifiers occurring in place of the sign for the noun, which was not
previously articulated, conveying not only its position in space and the relations
Evaluative process Characteristics
Diminutivisation Restricted articulation of the sign or
occurrence of a classifier defining smaller
size and shape; the typical NMMs,
occurring on both the noun alone or upon
the noun and its relative classifier are:
narrow eyes, mouth/tongue protrusion;
Augmentation Enlarged articulation of the sign or
occurrence of a classifier defining bigger
size and shape; the typical NMMs,
occurring on both the noun alone or upon
the noun and its relative classifier are: open
eyes, inflated cheeks/teeth biting the
inferior lip, slightly grinding teeth or half-
frown mouth;
Endearment It consists in specific NMMs mainly
associated with diminutivisation processes.
The NMMs involved are: mouth protrusion
co-occurring with head tilt and narrow eyes;
Pejoration It can occur with both processes of
augmentation and diminutivisation and the
NMMs involved are the ones usually
associated with canonical forms conveying
disgust, refuse and disease.
NMMs
NMMs
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NMMs NMMs
with its referents, but also features of evaluative morphology modifying it,
without the occurrence of the adjective referring to the same semantic field;
iii. N+CL: as defined by Petitta et al. (2015), the occurrence of the noun with a
classifier describing its size or shape is an example of manual sequential
evaluative morphology. I considered occurrences of these combinations, which
were interestingly marked by specific NMMs adding further meaning;
iv. N+A : nouns modified by adjectives that in the other examples were replaced
solely by NMMs or classifiers;
v. N+A+CL: a complete nominal constituent characterised by the noun followed
by adjectives and classifiers, both conveying features of evaluative morphology
and marked by specific NMMs;
vi. Role shift: this technique was used to convey diminutive, augmentative,
endearment and pejorative features. The signer represented the referent but he
also ‘modified’ it adding specific NMMs conveying evaluative features.
Successively, I transcribed the fairy tales through glosses into a spreadsheet file in
Excel, allocating the examples to categories. This operation allowed me to count the
occurrences for each category: 16 out of 22 fairy tales displayed evaluative strategies
and I extrapolated 154 elements containing diminutive, augmentative, endearment and
pejorative features, 77 realized through evaluative strategies ( N, CL, N+CL ) and 69
realised through the articulation of N+A(+CL).
The following table shows the number of examples for each category and the
relative percentage:
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
83
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMM
s
NMMs
NMMs
77(50%)
Table 3. Evaluative features individuated in the Fairy Tale Corpus
The first feature to catch my attention was the number of occurrences of nouns
simply modified by NMMs, a strategy that Petitta et al. (2015) called non-manual
simultaneous evaluation. Therefore, I selected the examples belonging to the first three
categories in order to analyse which evaluative feature they conveyed. The data are
presented in the following table:
Diminutive Augmentative Endearment Pejorative Total
N
6 11 6 9 32
CL
/ 4 / 2 6
N+CL
17 14 4 4 39
Total
23 29 10 15 77
Table 4. Evaluative features for each evaluative strategy
As can be inferred from the table above, evaluative strategies, namely the
modification of the noun through NMMs, the modification of the classifier through
NMMs and the combination of noun and classifier, are mainly used to convey
diminutive and augmentative features.
Occurrences: 154 N %
N
32 20.77
CL
6 3.89
N+CL
39 25.32
N+A
47 30.51
N+A+CL
22 14.28
Role shift
8 5.19
69(44.80%)
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Deepening the examination, I have observed that each evaluative feature shows
a preference for a specific evaluative strategy. The percentages of each preference are
presented in the following pie charts:
Since my research aims at describing how diminutive, augmentative, endearment
and pejorative features are realised in LIS, I will now focus on their characteristics. To
this purpose, the fairy tale Riccioli d’Oro is quite useful since it provides the higher
occurrence of evaluative features conveyed through NMMs modifying the noun;
furthermore, the characteristics of each feature are clearly individuated since the tale
talks about a family of bears composed by father, mother and son, and it describes some
objects belonging to them. What is interesting in this tale is that each member of the
family is defined by peculiar features, also used to describe their respective objects: the
father is characterised as being austere and big; the mother is sweet and smaller whereas
the little bear is small and cute. The following images show these differences.
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Figure 46. a) (father) BEAR b)(mother) BEAR c) (son) BEAR
(pejorative and augmentative) (endearment) (diminutive) (Riccioli d’Oro)
The following are, instead, examples of an object, namely a chair, which is modified
with respect to its owner.
Figure 47. a) (father’s) CHAIR b)(mother’s) CHAIR c)(son’s) CHAIR
(augmentative) (endearment) (diminutive) (Riccioli d’Oro)
These are typical examples of non-manual simultaneous morphology because the signs
for the nouns are modified through NMMs conveying the idea of a very big chair
belonging to the father (in Figure 47a), of a smaller one belonging to the mother (47b)
and of a really small one belonging to the little bear, in (47c). In more detail, the
augmentative feature is conveyed through furrowed eyebrows and teeth biting the
inferior lip (46a), associated to an enlarged articulation of the sign CHAIR (47a),
whereas the diminutive feature is expressed through squinted eyes and tongue
protrusion, together with a reduced articulation of the sign for the noun (47c).
Moreover, the sign ‘father bear’ (46a) is different from ‘mother bear’ (46b) as far as
their connotation is concerned: that the father is austere and possibly bad is conveyed
through furrowed eyebrows, closed mouth and tensed face that characterise it as an
example of pejorative. On the other hand, the sign for the ‘mother bear’ is an example
of endearment, since relaxed eyebrows and rounded mouth convey sweetness and
kindness.
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The fact that this tales is particularly characterised by evaluative strategies without
recurring to adjectives to convey the same meanings could be explained by considering
the elements involved: there are always three entities which are compared to each other
so each of them functions as reference for the others and there is no need to add
information inserting adjectives; furthermore, there was no need of adjectives since
there was no need to convey information other than those regarding size and shape,
therefore the modification of the sign articulation and the adjunction of specific NMMs
were sufficient to convey evaluative features.
Besides, when an entity is represented through the articulation of a classifier,
evaluative modifications intervene on the morphology of the classifier itself. As can be
seen in Figure 48, the signer produces a handling classifier referring to a spoon used to
mix something inside a pot, instead of signing POT, and through the enlargement of the
mixing movement he conveys its size and shape. Moreover, he emphasises
augmentative features inflating his cheeks. On the other hand, Figure 49 is an example
of diminutive realized through: restricted space in the articulation of the classifier
referring to a bowl and non-manual markers characterised by squinted eyes and lips
protrusion. Lips protrusion instead of tongue protrusion is an attested and productive
variant for the realization of the diminutive.
Figure 48. CLhandling (augmentative)
‘A big pot’(Biancaneve)
An interesting instance of augmentative regards the modification of a quantity classifier:
as can be seen in Figure 50 the signer inflates his cheeks and enlarges the articulation of
the classifier in order to represent a generous quantity of straw.
Figure 50. A generous quantity conveyed through augmentative features. (I tre porcellini)
Figure 49. CLperimeter (diminutive)
‘A little bowl’(Riccioli d’Oro)
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As far as the third category is concerned, namely manual sequential evaluation,
involving the sign for the noun in its citation form followed by the corresponding
classifier, the following are examples of diminutive (Figure 51) and pejorative (Figure
52) respectively.
Figure 51. BIRD CLsize (diminutive features) Figure 52. HOUSE CLdescriptive (pejorative features)
‘A little bird’ ‘A ruined house’
(La donnola e il gallo) (Stella)
In Figure 51 the size of the bird is conveyed through the manual classifier for ‘small
entity’ and the typical diminutive NMM of lips protrusion; slightly squinted eyes and
raised eyebrows add features of endearment. The expression in Figure 51 clearly
contrasts with the one in 52, which instead conveys pejorative features describing the
house: deformed and ruined. Interestingly, non-manual markers conveying the
pejorative feature begins with the articulation of the sign for the noun and then extend
over the articulation of the classifier. This order of articulation respects the order
occupied by these elements within the syntactic structure (Cinque 2015): following
Bertone (2007), I have proposed that in LIS the NP, while moving upwards from its
base position, incorporates features of evaluative morphology and then extend them
over its classifier (cfr. § 2.5.1).
In many cases the signer preferred to convey the characteristics of the subject he
was describing through the strategy of role shift, instead of presenting him from an
external point of view. Particularly, role shift was used for the categorisation of bad
characters such as witches and ogres, conveying pejorative features, as can be seen in
(53) and (54).
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Figure 53. ‘evil character’ Figure 54. ‘ogre’
(L’Albero Segnante) (Giacomino e il Fagiolo Magico)
Nouns modified by adjectives and classifiers conveying diminutive,
augmentative, endearment and pejorative features, deserve to be mentioned since I have
individuated a significant number of occurrences (44.80%). It seems that adjectives
were produced when it was necessary to specify some characteristics of the entity
involved. For example, in Figure 55 the signer is describing the clothes of the
protagonist, namely Cenerentola Sorda, but the NMMs alone were not sufficient to
explain how much they were ruined.
Figure 55. DRESSS DIRTY SMUDGED BLACK
Moreover, adjectives were mainly used when there was the necessity to define the size
of an entity because of the lack of a term of comparison: this strategy was mainly
adopted in the fairy tale Giacomino e il Fagiolo Magico, in which the signer articulated
the adjective BIG several times, in order to be more precise and to convey the size of
the ogre and his relative objects.
I also noticed the combination of an adjective of value, such as ‘beautiful’ or ‘old’ with
NMMs conveying endearment features. This happened when the signer expressed a
judgement on the character, without really impersonating him/her through role shift.
89
Figure 56. WOMAN OLD DEAR
‘A dear old woman’(Biancaneve)
In (56) the signer adds to the adjectives OLD and DEAR the typical NMMs conveying
endearment features: relaxed eyebrows and a sweet expression of the eyes for DEAR
and slightly squinted eyes and raised eyebrows for OLD, which he also used to describe
the mother bear in Riccioli d’Oro. In Figure 56 the signer is describing the old woman
from the point of view of the main character, namely Biancaneve, who does not know
that the old woman is, instead, a witch.
Evaluative features can also be used to change the connotation of a colour, as Petitta et
al. (2015) individuated for the sign for ‘blue’, which became ‘bluish’. In Biancaneve the
signer adds NMMs conveying pejorative features in order to add a negative connotation
to the colour green: furrowed eyebrows and disgusted facial expression.
Figure 57. COLOUR GREEN (pejorative features)
‘Greenish’(Biancaneve)
3.3.2 Preliminary results
The analysis of fairy tales has been particularly useful to attest the occurrence of
evaluative strategies in Italian Sign Language. As far as fairy tales are concerned, it
seems that these strategies are mainly used to convey diminutive and augmentative
features, through the articulation of the noun followed by a classifier, both marked by
specific NMMs. The characteristics of each feature could be individuated because the
signer, during the same tale, marked the sign defining an entity, with respect to the
90
context: when introducing the entity he did not convey evaluative features, but when he
had to describe it, he modified the citation form of the sign by adding NMMs or by
altering its articulation. Moreover, when the signer wanted to convey further
information regarding, for example, the connotation of the considered entity through the
point of view of some characters, he used role shift. This technique allowed him to
express more information simultaneously, both objective information regarding size and
shape, and subjective information like affection or disgust.
Interestingly, features of evaluative morphology marked both the noun and its
classifiers or adjectives (when present). Previous studies (Bertone 2007) propose that, in
LIS, the NP moves upward in the syntactic structure, pied-piping categories dominating
it. Adopting the finer grained structure of the extending projection of the NP (Cinque
2015) for LIS, I assume that the noun, while climbing upwards the structure,
incorporates features of evaluative morphology whose domain spreads over its
adjectives and classifiers. These instances support my hypothesis of considering NMMs
conveying diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features not only
bound morphemes, but also heads of dedicated functional projections within the
syntactic structure, between the APvalue and APsize, showing that the structure elaborated
by Cinque (2015) for oral languages, accounts for LIS as well. In (58) I tentatively
illustrate the NP movement from its base position to the specifier of the DP, while
incorporating these features.
Figure 58. Extended projection of the NP and NP movement in LIS
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3.4 Elicited data
The second stage of my research consisted in the elicitation of evaluative
strategies through three tasks proposed to three LIS native signers: Laura, Gabriele e
Beatrice. Given the involvement of NMMs in the topic of my research, I needed to
involve someone who had not only a good competence in LIS but also someone who is
a native signer with a deep linguistic awareness19
. Laura, Gabriele and Beatrice were
perfect candidates because they are LIS teachers and they have already participated to
linguistic researches, so they were completely comfortable in front of the camera with
which I recorded their productions. The recording session took place in familiar settings
in order to make informants feel at ease: in Gabriele’s office at the Ca’ Foscari
University of Venice and in the classroom where Laura and Beatrice teach in Rome.
Since the aim of my research mainly consisted in the examination of facial expressions,
I paid particular attention to the setting of lighting and the position of the informant who
must sit in front of the camera, so that NMMs could be clearly visible.
Before beginning the tests, I asked the informants some personal information,
reported in Table 5 below.
Table 5. Informants
I will present each task that was administered to the three informants and the relative
results in the following paragraphs.
19
Since NMMs serve both linguistic and affective functions, it is important to investigate non-
manual markers in Deaf native signers because they have acquired linguistic NMMs as part of the
linguistic system and they are able to use them in the proper context (Corina et al. 1999). Bettinger et al.
(1997) claim that there is evidence that experience with sign language improves the ability to discriminate
facial information.
LAURA GABRIELE BEATRICE
AGE 37 39 39
BIRTHPLACE Rome Salerno Rome
CURRENT PLACE Rome Padua Rome
MOTHERTONGUE LIS LIS LIS
EVERYDAY
LANGUAGE
COMMUNICATION
LIS LIS LIS
EDUCATION High-school
Diploma
Master’s Degree High-school
Diploma
FAMILY Parents Deaf,
Sister hearing
All Deaf All Deaf
JOB LIS teacher LIS teacher LIS teacher
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3.4.1 Picture naming task
The aim of the first test was to examine how the morphology of the sign would
change in order to describe the same object with different characteristics of size, shape
and connotation. For this reason, I administered my informants some sheets with some
drawings representing objects asking them to sign each object. I explicitly requested to
sign the nouns without using adjectives describing their shape or other details, since I
was interested in the possibility, or not, to convey diminutive, augmentative,
endearment and pejorative features through the modification of the noun alone. The list
of nouns20
is the following:
1. CUP
2. BOOK
3. BOX
4. TABLE
5. HOUSE
6. CAR
7. SHOE
8. BACKPACK
9. BOAT
10. DOG
Each sheet comprised four images (except for the ones for CUP and BACKPACK
which contained three illustrations) of the element: a neutral one, a smaller, a bigger and
a ruined version of it, in order to elicit diminutive/endearment, augmentative and
pejorative features. I chose the objects listed above since they are all quite common and
possibly present in everyday language communication. Furthermore, I mostly selected
nouns articulated in the neutral space in order to avoid encouraging the use of classifiers
or role shift and to have a clearer idea of how the sign for the noun could change to
convey different features.
20
The images I used for the picture naming task are provided at the end of the dissertation,
Appendix 1.
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3.4.1.1 Analysis
Informants have produced 110 elements (one informant missed the sheet
regarding the sign for BOAT). The most common strategy to convey evaluative features
consists in the production of the sign for the noun followed by the one for the classifier
(72 occurrences, 65.45%). The other productions are divided between the direct
modification of the sign for the noun through NMMs (4 occurrences, 3.63%) and the
articulation of the noun followed by the adjectives ‘small’/‘big’, ‘tall’/’short’, ‘ruined’
(34 occurrences, 30.90%). As far as the production of adjectives is concerned, the
highest production regards the first informant, Laura, (16/34) who used ‘small’ to
describe: CUP (in its neutral and diminutive form), HOUSE, CAR, SHOE; she
produced the adjective ‘big’ to convey augmentative features of: HOUSE, SHOE, SHIP
and DOG and she selected other adjectives to convey pejorative features. The other 18
occurrences of adjectives are divided between the other 2 informants (9 produced by
Gabriele and 9 by Beatrice) to describe the height of the TABLE and of the DOG and to
convey pejorative features of several referents. This leads me to two different
considerations: first of all, the higher production of adjectives by Laura could be due to
the fact that she has been the first informant I have proposed the test to, so I may have
not been completely clear in my instructions; second, the fact that most of the adjectives
were used by all informants to convey pejorative features, may define it as the preferred
strategy for this feature. Given the high occurrence of this strategy I will first deal with
it. Particularly, all the informants produced two adjectives to describe referents with
pejorative features, as can be seen in Figure 59 and 60. The adjective in (59) is
articulated with both hands selecting the ‘S’ configuration and informants produced it to
describe the ruined status of the referents, often followed by another adjective referring
to the same semantic field, provided in (60).
Figure 59. Adjective occurring after the sign TABLE to convey pejorative features.
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Figure 60. Adjective produced after the sign CAR to convey pejorative features.
As can be seen, both the adjectives are associated with specific NMMs characterised by:
furrowed eyebrows, disgusted expression, tensed face and mouth, which can be
optionally open with little tongue protrusion. One of the informants explained that the
adjective in (60) has several meanings, such as: ruined, dirty, broken. What is
interesting about these adjective is that their presence influenced the order of
articulation of other modifiers, namely classifiers. In fact, when referring to elements
characterised by pejorative features, all the informants first produced classifier denoting
the elements size and shape and then produced one or both the above mentioned
adjectives. Therefore, the resulting order of articulation was N+CL+A, as can be seen in
Figure 61.
Figure 61. Example of the order of articulation N+CLsize+adjective
The informant produces the sign CAR (picture on the left) followed by the classifier
referring to its shape (the same classifier was produced with an enlarged or restricted
articulation to convey augmentative and diminutive features respectively) and lastly he
produces one of the two adjectives I mentioned above, to describe the referent
pejorative features (picture on the right).
At first sight, this order is unacceptable assuming that the NP pied-pipes the APs and
then moves up to the Classifier Phrase (Bertone 2007), but this derivation may be due to
the kind of classifiers involved and there might be two explanations: first, the size and
shape classifiers produced are, instead, adjectives (realized through classifiers)
95
belonging to the APsize, that is lower than the APvalue to which the considered adjectives
belongs; second, there might be a lower FP hosting size and shape classifiers, which
would be nearer to the NP and would justify the articulation of the classifiers before the
one of the adjectives of value. To this respect, it could be assumed a more detailed
extended projection of the NP, characterised by several FPs hosting the different kinds
of classifiers. Obviously this is just a proposal that require a larger number of
informants and data in order to be investigated, considering that the classifier system in
LIS is very rich and it has not been fully described yet.
As for the other productions, they were examples of manual sequential
evaluation, characterised by the sign for the noun, followed by classifiers describing
size, shape or conveying other features such as pejorative ones. Great variability has
been observed among the classifiers produced. For instance, for some elements, the
three informants selected three different classifiers, as can be seen in Figure 62 in which
the classifier refers to a cup.
Figure 62. Different classifiers referring to the same element: CUP (diminutive features)
As the images show, in order to manually express the diminutive feature of the sign for
‘cup’ the informants focused their attention on three different characteristics: perimeter,
shape and height respectively. Even though the classifiers involved are different, all the
informants reduced their articulation in order to convey the diminutive feature.
Furthermore, the non-manual markers involved are pretty much the same: squinted eyes
and tongue protrusion. There were no productions associating endearment features with
diminutive ones, but this can be due to the kind of task: a mere naming of elements can
hardly involve subjective comments.
As far as augmentative features are concerned, it has also been the feature that
has provided examples of non-manual markers directly modifying the noun, as can be
seen in Figure 63.
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Figure 63. Augmentative features modifying the sign BOX.
Together with an enlarged articulation of the sign, the augmentative feature is conveyed
through teeth biting the inferior lip, mouth shaping an ‘O/A’ (some occurrences),
furrowed eyebrows and open eyes. These are examples of manual-oral simultaneous
evaluation. Evidence that signs represented in Figure 63 are noun and not classifiers,
comes from the analysis of the other features, in which the sign BOX was followed by
the classifier of size, different from the signs reported above.
Interestingly, I have also identified specific non-manual markers occurring with
neutral signs, which in BSL are associated to the idea of doing something in a “normal
manner” (Lewin, Schembri 2011: 95). They are characterised by lips protrusion and
head moving rapidly to the left and to the right alternatively. These NMMs were used
by all informants when articulating the classifiers for the relevant referent involved.
Figure 64 provides three examples of this NMM.
Figure 64. HOUSE TABLE BOOK
As the images show, the three different classifiers referring to three different referents
produced in their citation form are marked by the same non-manual markers,
distinguishing the referents from other versions of them in which they are represented
with diminutive, augmentative or pejorative features.
Even though the results show that informants made a large use of evaluative
strategies to convey noun modification, the fact that in the sequence N+CL non-manual
97
markers often occurred only with classifiers, needs to be considered. From a syntactic
point of view, this strategy could seem inappropriate since I have supposed (following
Bertone 2007) that the NP moves from its basic position, in the lower portion of the DP,
and goes up pied-piping the categories that dominate it; by doing so, it incorporates
features of evaluative morphology and then it extends them to the classifier. If the noun
is unmarked, it could mean that there is something wrong with the derivation. But,
considering that I observed great variability in the productions, this phenomenon could
be explained considering the kind of task: I asked the informants to sign some objects
drawn on some sheets. The illustration of the referents may have induced the informants
to firstly nominate it, through the articulation of the sign for the noun and then to define
its characteristics through the articulation of the relative classifier modified by specific
NMMs. This could also explain the greater preference of manual sequential evaluation
instead of simultaneous evaluation found in the naturalistic data analysed in § 3.3.1.
To sum up, the first picture naming task has been useful to compare non manual
markers conveying different evaluative features. However, it displays the common
limits of elicitation tasks, namely of being less spontaneous. Nevertheless, it confirmed
the huge involvement of classifiers and non-manual markers for the modification of
nouns conveying additional features.
3.4.2 Narration task
The second task I designed to elicit evaluative morphology, asked informants to
describe a picture story21
that I previously prepared. By using visual material, I avoided
cross-linguistic influence (Italian-LIS) and I gave them the possibility to be freer during
narration: they could both simply describe the pictures or make up a more complex
story by adding elements, comments or showing personal involvement. It was
fundamental, however, that they paid particular attention to details. In the story, I
inserted elements characterised by evaluative features (some of them were also present
in the picture naming task).
i. House (pejorative features)
ii. Child (diminutive and pejorative features concerning his shoes and dress)
iii. Dog (augmentative and endearment features)
21
The illustrations of the picture story are provided in Appendix 2.
98
iv. Elements in the room (augmentative and diminutive features)
v. Book (augmentative features)
vi. Backpack (augmentative features)
vii. Mountains and way to the treasure (augmentative and diminutive features)
viii. Gate, door and castle (augmentative and diminutive features)
ix. Elements in the hall (augmentative and pejorative features)
x. Man (augmentative and endearment features)
xi. Table (augmentative features)
As expected, the informants paid more or less attention to these elements and
sometimes emphasised others.
The aim of the task was to examine the production of evaluative strategies in a
more spontaneous context as a narration task can be, and to observe if the referents
presented in the picture naming task could be produced differently. I asked informants
to tell the story as if they had a 8 years old child as interlocutor, in order to elicit more
subjective features of endearment and pejorative.
3.4.2.1 Analysis
After having collected the videos, I watched them several times, firstly one
following the other and then I analysed each one individually, writing evaluative
strategies in the form of glosses in an Excel spreadsheet, dividing them among the six
categories I individuated for the Fairy Tales Corpus (cfr. § 3.3.1).
The total number of evaluative items I individuated is 98: 22 produced by Laura, 51
produced by Gabriele and 25 produced by Beatrice. Gabriele has been the informant
who paid more attention to details, describing all the elements involved.
The following table shows the evaluative items produced by each informant,
divided among the above mentioned categories.
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NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
NMMs
Table 6. Evaluative strategies individuated in the narration task
As can be inferred from the table above, evaluative strategies involving the
articulation of the sign for the noun modified by NMMs, the production of the classifier
modified by NMMs and the combination of the noun and its classifiers, both marked by
specific NMMs, are the preferred ways to describe elements characterised by
diminutive, augmentative, pejorative and endearment features.
As far as Laura’s productions are concerned, it can be noticed that they are
almost perfectly divided between those that can be called ‘common evaluative
strategies’ (namely those involving NMMs in the modification of the noun, of the
classifier alone or of the noun and the relative classifier, respectively) and the
combination of the sign for the noun followed by adjectives and classifiers. This was a
quite expected production, since she produced more N+A (modified by NMMs) than the
other two informants, in the picture naming task as well. I conclude that she prefers to
produce adjectives in order to better describe entities. Her production was less detailed
and she missed to modify some referents such as: the bed in the child’s room, the
child’s backpack and the path to the castle. She decided to tell the story as if she was
remembering a childhood experiences. I noticed some variability in the occurrence of
NMMs with the sign for the noun, but what is interesting is that she produced the sign
CUP with the diminutive NMMs even though it was followed by the adjective SMALL.
This is worthy to be noticed since in the picture naming task she produced the sign CUP
without the relevant NMMs expressing diminutive features, as can be seen in the
following Figure.
LAURA GABRIELE BEATRICE
N
0
7
31.81%
4
28
54.90%
1
14
56%
CL
2 5 4
N+CL
5 19 9
N+A
7
10
45.45%
8
13
25.49%
4
5
20%
N+A+CL
3 5 1
Role shift
5 10 6
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Figure 65a)The sign CUP in the picture naming task b)The sign CUP in the narration task
The referent involved in (65a) and (65b) is the same: a cup modified by diminutive
features. In both instances, the informant produces the sign for the noun followed by the
adjective SMALL and a classifier, but while in the picture naming task (65a) the NMMs
conveying diminutive features occurred only over the adjective and the classifier, in the
narration task (65b) she produced the relevant NMMs also over the sign for the noun.
The same happened for other elements. From these productions it could be easily
inferred that there is a certain degree of variability, but the fact that she marked the noun
in the more spontaneous context of narration, leads me to conclude that this is her
preferred articulation. These examples can support the proposal that the different
productions of the picture naming task may be due to the task itself, in which it was
required to modify a list of elements.
Most of this signer’s productions regarded augmentative and pejorative features and she
successfully conveyed endearment features through role shift of the child playing with
the dog. The non-manual markers produced for the different features respected the
characteristics identified during the picture naming task.
Gabriele’s production was, instead, the most detailed one. He decided to tell the
story as an external narrator and his preferred strategy has been the production of the
noun followed by one or more classifiers. He also produced some instances of noun
modification through NMMs, which are provided in Figure 66 (a) and (b).
Figure 66. (a) DOG (endearment features) (b) TRAIL (diminutive features)
‘A lovely dog’ ‘A narrow trail’
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These examples are worthy to be mentioned because: (a) is the production of the sign
DOG modified by NMMs conveying endearment (this is not an instance of role shift: it
is the narrator that has adopted the child’s point of view and has associated endearment
features to the dog while narrating), whereas (b) presents the articulation of the sign
TRAIL modified by diminutive features involving: lips protrusion (instead of tongue
protrusion), furrowed eyebrows (instead of squinted eyes) and a restricted articulation of
the sign. Gabriele mainly used evaluative strategies to convey augmentative and
diminutive features and I observed some variability in the occurrences of NMMs over
the sign for the noun in his productions as well. Sometimes, the noun was marked, some
other times it was not, as if he was just introducing the element for the first time.
However, what is interesting is that sometimes the noun was marked by the NMM
‘open eyes’, which is typical of topicalized elements or polar questions. After having
watched the entire story several times, and after having compared the occurrences of
this specific non-manual marker in different contexts, I have individuated three different
contexts associated with it:
i. To express augmentative features;
ii. To express surprise;
iii. In polar questions.
As far as augmentative features are concerned, the signer often marked the sign for the
noun with this specific non-manual marker of ‘open eyes’ and then added furrowed
eyebrows and inflated cheeks or teeth biting the inferior lips over the classifier, as can
be seen in Figure 67.
Figure 67. BOOK+CLshape (augmentative features)
‘A big heavy book’
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Figure 68 provides an example of the same kind, with the occurrence of a slight
different mouth shape conveying augmentative features, and the NMM of ‘open eyes’
beginning with the articulation of the sign for the noun and marking the adjective BIG.
Figure 68. DOG+BIG (augmentative features)
‘A big dog’
Instead, while telling about the child watching a big table full of food, the NMM of
‘open eyes’ is used to convey the child’s surprise in seeing such a treasure (Figure 69).
Figure 69. FOOD WATER CAKES
I individuated the NMM of ‘open eyes’ as an instance of the child’s surprise for two
reasons: first, it is the same expression the narrator uses while impersonating the child
entering the room with the treasure; second, all the stuff present on the table are marked
by this same feature. The surprised expression of the child is due to the fact that at the
beginning of the story he is a poor boy living alone. Of course, the context of
occurrence of this NMM was fundamental to distinguish it from other situations.
Another occurrence of the NMM of ‘open eyes’ attracted my attention: while
describing the child’s house and his dress, the signer marked nouns with open eyes,
whereas the referents’ adjectives or classifiers occurred with the required NMMs to
describe evaluative features. These examples occurred after the articulation of a polar
question asking if there was a child, which I report in Figure 70 for sake of clearness.
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Figure 70. CHILD ? THERE IS
‘Is there a child?’ ‘Yes, there is’
The signer used this strategy many times while narrating; indeed, asking question is a
quite common strategy in LIS and I suppose the narrator used it to attract the attention
on the referent he was going to describe. The answer could be both characterised by the
repetition of the sign for the referent inquired followed by its modifiers, or by the
modifiers alone marked by specific evaluative features, leaving the noun implied. I
considered the NMM of ‘open eyes’ as a polar question marker, instead of a wh-
question or TOPIC, because the former requires furrowed eyebrows and the second is
characterised by open eyes together with eye blinking and movement forward of the
chest, which were not present in these contexts.
Figure 71 is another example of this strategy, in which the question could be: ‘Does the
child have shoes?’ and the signer answered the question with the modification of the
considered element, without articulating the noun.
Figure 71. SHOES+CLsize (augmentative features)
‘Does he have shoes?Yes, he has big shoes’
Again, the context is fundamental to distinguish the different functions of non-manual
markers.
Beatrice’s production is remarkable as well, since she definitely preferred
common evaluative strategies involving the articulation of the sign for the noun
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modified by NMMs, the production of the classifier modified by NMMs and the
combination of the noun and its classifiers both marked by specific NMMs, instead of
producing adjectives to convey diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative
features. She narrated the picture story as if she was the main character, namely through
the technique or role shift and the evaluative strategies produced mainly conveyed
augmentative features. Her story was less detailed than Gabriele’s and she missed some
elements, but her production was consistent with the characteristics previously
individuated for each feature. She provides some variability in marking the noun as
well, but there are no occurrences of topic or question constructions; the only
occurrences of open eyes conveyed augmentative features, as can be seen in Figure 72.
Figure 72. DOG+TALL (augmentative features) CLshape (GATE) (augmentative features)
‘A big tall dog’ ‘A huge gate’
Furthermore, she produced some examples of noun and classifiers directly modified by
non-manual markers. Figure 73 provides some examples.
Figure 73. DOOR HANDLE (pejorative features) CLsize (TRAIL) (diminutive features)
‘A broken door handle’ ‘A narrow trail’
These examples are worthy to be mentioned since they provide some slight differences
in the articulation of pejorative and diminutive features respectively. In fact, the picture
on the left provides the sign for a ‘door handle’ modified by pejorative NMMs
consisting in: furrowed eyebrows, tongue protrusion and a general expression of
disgust. The figure on the right, instead, presents the modification of the classifier to
105
convey diminutive features: not only the selected handshape for the classifier is
different from the one used by Gabriele (see Figure 66b above), but also the NMMs are
slightly different, being characterised by squinted eyes and tensed lips instead of tongue
protrusion.
One last remarkable strategy is worthy to be considered: the three informants
made large use of role shift that allowed them to convey diminutive, augmentative and
endearment features without articulating the sign for the noun followed by its modifiers.
Particularly, they all used this strategy to convey endearment features that the child
associated to the dog, as can be seen in Figure 74.
Figure 74. Examples of role shift conveying endearment features.
The first picture shows Laura while impersonating the boy who is been licked by the
dog; the smiling expression conveys the boy’s affection for the dog. Gabriele, instead, is
impersonating the dog itself, with a smiling expression conveying its endearment
features and the same can be said for Beatrice.
We can conclude that role shift is a productive strategy to express evaluative
morphology. It is a very useful way to convey more information simultaneously, and
particularly to convey subjective features requiring the signer to take the point of view
of the character involved in order to be conveyed.
The analysis of the three LIS native signers’ productions has been really useful
to clarify and specify the nature of evaluative strategies in LIS, and to demonstrate that
LIS allows to convey diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features
without the use of adjectives. Moreover, the detailed examination of their productions,
in addition to the study of a corpus of 22 fairy tales, provided new characteristics
defining each evaluative feature. Consequently the table presented at the beginning of
this chapter (cfr. § 3.3.1) can be modified by adding some elements reported in the table
below.
106
Table 7. Evaluative strategies in LIS
3.4.3 Grammaticality judgements
The third and last task I proposed to my informants consisted in observing some
images and providing grammatical judgements. Specifically, I showed them some
screenshots I selected from the Fairy Tales Corpus and asked them to concentrate on
NMMs, to explain what they thought the signer was meaning and if they agreed with
that sign.
The screenshots were examples of nouns modified by non-manual markers to convey
evaluative features. Figure 75 provides some examples.
Evaluative process Characteristics
Diminutivisation Restricted articulation of the sign or
of the classifier defining smaller size
and shape;
squinted eyes and tensed mouth;
furrowed eyebrows and lips/tongue
protrusion;
Augmentation enlarged articulation of the sign or
of the classifier defining bigger size
and shape;
open eyes and slightly grinding
teeth/mouth shaping O/A;
furrowed eyebrows and inflated
cheeks/teeth biting the inferior lip;
Endearment mainly associated with diminutive
features;
relaxed eyebrows and lips
protrusion;
sweet expression of the eyes;
Pejoration it can occur with both processes of
augmentation and diminutivisation;
disgusted or angry facial expression;
furrowed eyebrows and tensed face
or lips/tongue protrusion.
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Figure 75. a) DOG (pejorative) b) TREE (augmentative) c) OLD(endearment)
Some images belonging to the grammaticality judgement task.
The images provide the signs for: a dog modified by pejorative features (75a), a tree
modified by augmentative features (75b) and the sign OLD modified by endearment
features (75c).
I proposed the informants 16 screenshots characterised by diminutive, augmentative,
endearment and pejorative features and the aim was to investigate if they recognised
them as valid and if they accepted the possibility to directly modify the sign of the noun
through NMMs to convey evaluative features, even though they did not produce many
examples of this kind in the previous tasks.
Interestingly, the majority of the screenshots were recognised and accepted. By
looking at the image of the ‘small chair’, the informants immediately produced the
adjective ‘small’ to describe it. Particularly, the images containing diminutive features
were all recognised quickly. Furthermore, they recognised endearment features
modifying the signs OLD and LITTLE BEAR, describing them with adjectives such as:
‘sweet’, ‘good’, ‘nice’. Augmentative and pejorative features, instead, were a bit
confused when they were just characterised by the non-manual markers of ‘furrowed
eyebrows’. Sometimes, the augmentative feature was not recognised because of the lack
of the enlarged articulation of the sign; this led informants to interpret ‘furrowed
eyebrows’ as NMMs marking a ‘wh- question’ or an uncertain situation. At the same
time, pejorative features marking the sign WOMAN were described as conveying a
desire of possession or of mocking someone.
Nevertheless, in general this task demonstrated that modifying the sign for the
noun to convey evaluative features is a recognised and attested strategy, and none of the
informants misinterpreted the screenshots. Maybe the instances causing doubt would
have been avoided if I had proposed informants the entire video instead of single
screenshots, but I was afraid of influencing them too much.
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3.5 Conclusions
The present chapter has offered a description of evaluative strategies in Italian
Sign Language, resulting from the analysis of a corpus of fairy tales and elicited data.
The Fairy Tales Corpus has been propaedeutic to the identification of the most common
evaluative strategies and functioned as term of comparison for the elicited data collected
through three tasks I personally designed: picture naming, narration and grammaticality
judgements.
In both the Corpus and the elicited data I have individuated a general preference
for the production of nouns directly modified by NMMs or followed by classifiers
(modified by NMMs) rather than articulating adjectives to convey diminutive,
augmentative, endearment and pejorative features. Particularly, evaluative strategies
were mainly used to convey augmentative and diminutive features.
Considering the combination of the sign for the noun followed by classifiers, a
deeper examination revealed greater stability within the Fairy Tales Corpus as far as the
occurrence of NMMs with the sign for the noun is concerned. On the other hand,
elicited data displayed greater variability, especially in the picture naming task. In this
respect, the greater variability attested may be due to the kind of task employed, which
induced informants to firstly nominate the element (without marking it with specific
NMMs) and then to modify it through the production of classifiers or adjectives marked
with NMMs connected to each evaluative feature. This proposal has been confirmed by
the fact that some nouns belonging both to the picture-naming task and to the narration
task were not marked in the first task, but they occurred with specific NMMs during the
narration task. This was a satisfying result since the aim of the picture story was exactly
to elicit evaluative features in a more spontaneous context. However, being
characterised by more stable productions, the Fairy Tales Corpus’ results are more
truthful.
The elicited data have revealed interesting strategies stimulating linguistic
considerations that could be further investigate in future research. For instance, within
the collected elicited data, I individuated the occurrence of the same NMM
characterised by ‘open eyes’, related to three different contexts: conveying
augmentative features, surprise or marking a polar question. These examples
demonstrate the richness of the NMM system and the different functions they may carry
out depending on the context.
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Furthermore, among the evaluative strategies of both the Fairy Tales Corpus and
elicited data, I have observed a large use of role shift, mostly conveying endearment and
pejorative features, thanks to the possibility to assume the characters’ point of view.
Since my dissertation is also an attempt to examine whether linguistic principles
defined for oral languages account for LIS as well, I have also observed data from a
syntactic point of view. In general, the informants’ productions respected the order of
functional projections within the extended projection of the NP (Cinque 2015),
supporting my hypothesis that the NMMs associated with evaluative morphology are
heads of dedicated functional projections located between APvalue and APsize
individuated by Cinque (2015). The importance of these NMMs in the modification of
nouns or of their proforms, namely classifiers, to convey additional meaning, confirms
them as bound morphemes with an adverbial function.
However, there were instances of unexpected orders of articulations, especially
in the picture naming and narration tasks: sometimes informants produced the order
N+CL+A instead of the expected order N+A+CL. By deepening my analysis, I noticed
that the unexpected order occurred when informants had to produce nouns modified by
pejorative features; particularly, in those instances they first articulated classifiers
defining the referents size and shape and then they produced one or two adjectives
conveying pejorative features. This led me to hypothesize the existence of a lower
functional projection, nearer to the NP, hosting classifiers of size and shape and to the
possible existence of more FPs hosting different kinds of classifiers within the extended
projection of the noun phrase. Obviously, a larger study involving more informants is
needed to test this hypothesis further.
110
111
CHAPTER 4
Evaluative Morphology in other
Sign Languages
4.1 Introduction
This final chapter enriches the dissertation with examples of evaluative
morphology attested in other sign languages of the world22
. Based on the definition of
‘morphological type’ given by Aronoff et al. (2004) (cfr. § 2.3.1), the analysis of the
following SLs will show that processes of evaluative morphology do constitute a
morphological type, since they are universal and productive among sign languages.
Interestingly, in order to realize these processes, SLs involve the same elements, namely
non-manual markers (with a significant preference for mouth gestures) and classifiers.
Particularly, § 4.2 describes evaluative strategies of American Sign Language
(ASL); § 4.3 concerns British Sign Language (BSL); 4.4 presents similar strategies in
German Sign Language (DGS); French Sign Language (LSF) is presented in § 4.5; §
4.6 is dedicated to Polish Sign Language (PJM); § 4.7 considers Israeli Sign Language
(ISL) and § 4.8 provides examples from Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL).
4.2 American Sign Language (ASL)
American Sign Language is the language of the Deaf community of America
and it is used by 271.550 people23
. People using it as a second language (L2) are mainly
hearing children of deaf parents and many other hearing people.
Specifically, ASL has twelve articulatory location categories, divided between
the space and the signer’s body (Stokoe 1960, Stokoe et al. 1965). The basic order of
constituents is SVO (Liddel 1980, 2003) but there is a certain degree of variation,
especially in topic-comment constructions (Valli, Lucas 2001) or questions (Petronio,
Lillo-Martin 1997; Neidle et al. 2000).
As already mentioned in the previous paragraphs, sign languages display a marked
preference for co-occurring layering of articulation, namely they can use different layers
22
For details about each sign language, the reader is referred to Pfau et al. (2012) and the
references there cited. 23
http://www.ethnologue.com
112
simultaneously (the manual and the non-manual one) to convey a message. The
importance of non-manual markers is evident also in ASL, since they are involved in
phonology, morphology and syntax. According to Wilbur (2000) the lower portion of
the face is used to convey adverbial and adjectival information, whereas the non-
manuals belonging to the upper portion of the face, namely eyebrows, head position,
head nods, eye-gaze, occur with higher syntactic constituents. As far as evaluative
morphology is concerned, processes of diminutivisation and augmentation concern the
adjectival function of the non-manual markers of the lower face, which can co-occur
with the manual sign for the noun, with the noun and its modifiers, or with the classifier
for the noun, as can be seen in Figure 76 and 77.
Figure 76. Combination of a classifier and NMMs to convey different sizes of a cup: medium, large, extra-large.
(Schnepp 2011: 7)
Figure 77. Combination of a classifier and NMMs to convey different sizes of a cup: large and small.
(Schnepp 2011: 2)
The examples shown in Figure 76 and 77 belong to evaluative morphology since they
convey the different size of a cup without articulating an adjective, but reducing or
enlarging the articulation of the classifiers. Moreover, it is worthy to dedicate particular
attention to NNMs. Small size is conveyed through wrinkled eyebrows and small
rounded lips involved in the articulation of a specific mouth gesture called ‘PO’, which
means ‘very small’ and usually occurs with adjectives or classifiers constructions
denoting small size (Bickford, Fraychineaud 2006: 44).
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On the other hand, the example of the augmentative is characterised by a specific
mouth gestures called ‘CHA’ in Figure 76, which is slightly less marked in Figure 77.
Schnepp (2011) highlights the lexical function of these non-manuals: they are necessary
for the signs to be linguistically correct. The ‘CHA’ signal is characterised by rounded
lips pushed forward followed by wide open mouth adding the meaning ‘large’ to the
sign with which it co-occurs. Another mouth gesture called ‘PUFFED’ meaning ‘fat,
large and round’ can be involved in the augmentativisation process, occurring with
certain adjectives of size or classifiers constructions (Bickford, Fraychineaud 2006).
To convey pejorative feature, ASL uses a peculiar combination of NMMs
characterised by: lips drawn back to reveal the teeth, wrinkled eyebrows and muscular
tension overall the face, as can be seen in Figure 78.
Figure 78. NMMs conveying pejorative features in ASL (Bickford, Fraychineaud 2006: 41)
These NMMs can be articulated with verbs, but also with nouns and colours, conveying
the meaning ‘angry, disgusted, unpleasant’. Considering colours, Frishberg (1972)
claims that the semantic difference between ‘yellow’ and ‘yellowish’ is conveyed
through smaller movements of the sign conveying the meaning ‘yellowish’. The same
evaluative strategy has been individuated by Petitta, Di Renzo, Chiari (2015) (cfr. §
2.4.4) for the sign ‘bluish’ in ASL.
4.3 British Sign Language (BSL)
British Sign Language is the language of 77.000 people belonging to the British
Deaf Community24
. Its history goes back to 673-735, when an alphabet was created
thanks to the first defined use of fingers25
and it has been officially recognised as a
language in 2003 by the British Government.
24
http://www.ethnologue.com 25
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dcal/bslhistory/timeline-bsl
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One of its peculiarity is the two-handed fingerspelling and it is characterised by
many varieties related to different social contexts of use26
. Although there seems to be
variation in word order, Sutton-Spence and Wool (1999) refer that adjectives usually
follow the noun. Moreover, they claim that BSL “[…] can also build adjectives into
nouns, by changing the form of the noun. […] as well as incorporating adjectives into
nouns, they can be incorporated into noun’s proform […]” (Sutton-Spence, Woll 1999:
52). According to Sutton-Spence and Woll (1999), it is more common to incorporate
features of size and shape into the sign for the noun (Figure 79 and 80) or into its
classifier (Figure 81) instead of producing the sign for the adjective.
Figure 79. SMALL BOX (Sutton-Spence, Woll 1999: 53)
Figure 80. NARROW BELT WIDE BELT (Sutton-Spence, Woll 1999: 203)
Figure 81. BOOK THICK-BOOK (Sutton-Spence, Woll 1999: 53)
26
The reader is referred to Sutton-Spence, Woll (1999) for details about linguistic variation in
BSL.
115
Figures 79, 80 and 81 are examples of processes of diminutivisation and augmentation
since the sign for the noun incorporates features of size and shape and conveys them
through specific NMMs or classifiers, without the need to produce the adjective. The
incorporation of size and shape information is a common and productive strategy
concerning many BSL nouns.
Therefore, there are specific oral components whose articulation is compulsory for some
lexical items, since they carry fundamental information defining the sign. Figure 82
provides two examples (a, b) of oral component conveying the meaning ‘long, large’,
whereas (c) shows the oral component meaning ‘small’.
Figure 82. (a) ‘puffed cheeks’ (b) ‘shh’ (LARGE, LONG (c)‘sucked-in cheeks’ (SMALL)
(Sutton-Spence, Woll 1999: 87)
4.4 German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache: DGS)
DGS is the sign language used, according to EUD (European Union of the Deaf)
by 200.000 Deaf people living in Germany27
. It has been officially recognised in 2002
with the Disability Equality Act and it is characterised by regional dialects. Even though
the oral method for the education of deaf students is still prominent following the
tradition of the first school for the Deaf founded in 1778 in Leipzig (Perniss 2007),
nowadays there is an increasing awareness of the importance of using and studying sign
language.
Its basic word order is SOV. As for the other sign languages I have been dealing
with so far, non-manual markers carry out important phonological and morphosyntactic
functions in DGS. Pfau and Quer (2010) account for two different types of non-manual
markers with a morphological function: markers modifying nouns have an adjectival
function whereas markers modifying verbs fulfil and adverbial function. The adjectival
27
http://www.eud.eu/Germany-i-184.html
116
function refers to those instances in which the adjective is realized through non-manual
markers and its articulation is simultaneous to the one of the noun it modifies.
According to Pfau and Quer (2010: 5) “this is a common strategy, for instance, for
expressing the diminutive (‘small x’) and the augmentative (‘big x’)”. (33) and (34) are
examples of diminutive and augmentative features conveyed through NMMs in DGS.
)(
33) POSS1 FRIEND HOUSE BUY
‘My friend bought a small house’
( )
34) TODAY MAN TREE INDEX3 CUT-WITH-SAW3
‘Today the man will cut down the huge tree’
(Pfau and Quer 2010: 5)
As can be seen, no adjective surfaces in the two examples above. Indeed, the signer
sucks in his cheeks (represented by ‘)(‘ in (33)) to convey the meaning of a small house,
whereas he blows his cheeks (represented by ‘()’) to indicate that the tree is of
considerable size in (34).
4.5 French Sign Language (LSF)
LSF is the sign language of approximately 100.000 Deaf people living in France
(EUD 2014) and it is the SL that influenced both ASL and LIS. It has been officially
recognised in 2004.
LSF is the subject of two really interesting and innovative studies by Cuxac
(1985, 2000) and Cuxac et Salandre (2007), which claimed that the several coexisting
forms of iconicity in LSF are organized into macro structures, characterised by different
morphemes. What is interesting is that each morpheme can be conveyed through a
different part of the body (eye gaze, facial expression, movement of the body, hand
configurations). In their research, they show that ‘iconic’ does not mean ‘unstructured’.
Among the several iconic structures individuated by Cuxac (cfr. § 2.3.3), namely HIS,
transfers of size and form play a crucial role within the domain of evaluative
morphology. As can be seen in Figure 17 reported here as Figure 83, these structures are
used to convey the partial or total size/form of the considered entity. Particularly, facial
expressions are worthy to be mentioned since in (a) inflated cheeks convey the meaning
117
‘big’, referred to the tree trunk, without the need to articulate the relative adjective. At
the same time, in (b) the signer’s puckered lips and squinting eyes indicate that the
branch is skinny. For these characteristics and the meaning they convey, these structures
can be considered as processes of evaluative morphology conveying augmentative and
diminutive features respectively.
Figure 83 (a). Begging, middle and end of the tree trunk (Cuxac, Salandre 2007: 16)
Figure 84 (b). Position of tree branch, beginning and end (Cuxac, Salandre 2007: 16)
4.6 Polish Sign Language (PJM)
PJM is the sign language of 50.000 signers of Poland (EUD 2014). The first
primary schools for Deaf children were founded in 1817 and nowadays the education
offered to Deaf people is either in the spoken or in the sign language. Even though PJM
has not been legally recognised yet, there are laws encouraging media to become
accessible and courses and conferences are regularly organised to improve interpreters’
formation and to spread its knowledge among the hearing community.
As other sign languages, PJM makes an extensive use of non-manual linguistic
features, some of them functioning as adjectives, modifying the sign with which they
co-occur. Tomaszewski and Farris (2010) indicate the use of a specific non-manual
morpheme glossed ‘af’ which means that something is very large. The sign consists of
two mouth configuration features: open and labio-dental. It can be articulated with both
the manual articulation of the adjective or simultaneously with the articulation of the
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noun it modifies. In the following example by Tomaszewski, Farris (2010) the noun
SUM ‘catfish’ articulated with the simultaneous morpheme ‘af’ means ‘huge catfish’:
35) TELEWIZJA (rh) WIDZIEĆ SUM
(lh) IX-TVset
TV see huge catfish
‘I saw a huge catfish on TV’
(Tomaszewski, Farris 2010: 303)
The authors specify that in PJM a grammatical constraint imposes the ‘af’ morpheme to
occur only with descriptive classifier signs, when it is not articulated with the noun. In
fact descriptive classifiers are used to visually describe an object or person and they
usually follow the noun. There are other non-manual morphemes which accompany
descriptive classifiers: for example, the non-manual element ‘t’ characterised by tongue
protrusion and meaning ‘thin, narrow, small’ is often articulated with classifiers
referring to long objects, as can be seen in Figure 85.
Figure 85. Articulation of the non-manual morpheme ‘t’ with a descriptive classifier
(Tomaszewski, Farris 2010: 304)
Furthermore, PJM is characterised by another non-manual marker indicating that an
entity is large but not huge as indicated by the morpheme ‘af’. This morpheme is a
combination of furrowed eyebrows ‘fs’ and lightly protruded lips ‘pl’ plus an optional
occurrence of ‘puffed cheeks’, if the object is very large. These features belong to the
domain of evaluative morphology and realise processes of diminutivisation and
augmentation. Figure 86 provides an example in which the descriptive classifier
referring to a feature of Wavel castle in Cracow, is modified through the above
mentioned NMMs.
af
119
Figure 86. Descriptive classifier modified by the ‘fs’ and ‘pl’ NMMs (Tomaszewski, Farris 2010: 305)
4.7 Israeli Sign Language (ISL)
ISL is the sign language of the Deaf community living in Israel, which begun to
form in the late 1930s (Aronoff et al. 2003; Meir, Sandler 2007). Therefore, ISL “is
only about 70 years old” (Aronoff et al. 2004: 21) and its story is difficult to trace.
Through the comparison of ISL with other sign languages, it has been discovered that
the Deaf community of Israel was constituted by people using other SLs, which later
influenced ISL: one of these was DGS (Meir, Sandler 2007). Despite its being a quite
young language, ISL displays all the characteristics typical of sign languages, including
the extensive use of mouth gestures and classifiers to convey features of evaluative
morphology. In his research, Fuks (2014) asked his informants to sign some short
scenarios describing a change occurring in the contextually represented referent. He
noticed that a signer, in order to convey the different heels sizes, modified the
handshape classifier by reducing or enlarging it. What is interesting is that before the
sign for the classifier, she produced also the sign for the adjectives, BIG and SMALL
respectively, even though it was not necessary, since the non-manual markers associated
with the classifier were sufficient to convey the size feature. Figure 87 compares the
classifier used for the HIGH HEELS (a) and the one used for SMALL HEELS (b). It is
important to notice that the NMMs associated are completely different: furrowed
eyebrows and little tongue protrusion for the BIG HEELS and backward head tilt,
rounded mouth and little tongue protrusion for the SMALL ones:
Figure 87. (a) ISL classifier for HIGH HEELS (b) ISL classifier for SMALL HEELS (Fuks 2014: 214)
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Even though these are not really examples of diminutivisation and augmentativisation
they deserve to be mentioned since the signer’s production, namely N+Asize+CL
respects the order of functional projections within the syntactic structure (Cinque 2015)
and supports the hypothesis that NMMs conveying features of evaluative morphology
belong to the head positions of FPs between APvalue and APsize.
The great importance of mouth gestures was studied by Sandler (2009) who recognised
these features as expressive iconic images belonging to a system which parallel and
complete the linguistic communication. Sandler asked the informants to describe to
another signer the content of the cartoon Canary Row. She paid particular attention to
the segment in which the Cat squeezes himself into a drainpipe and climbs up to reach
Tweety Bird, who drops a bowling ball down the drainpipe to get rid of him. In order to
describe this situation, the signers conveyed with the hands the journey of the cat and
through mouth gestures the narrowness of the drainpipe. Furthermore, to introduce the
bowling ball, they articulated the sign for the noun and modified it through specific
NMMs, namely ‘puffed cheeks’. These are proper examples of evaluative morphology
and they are presented in Figure 88 (a) and (b) respectively.
Figure 88.(a)NMMs indicating narrowness of the drainpipe (b)‘puffed cheeks’ describing the ball
(Sandler 2009: 28)
The fact that NMMs and classifiers modifying nouns are present also in quite young
languages is a further confirmation that these elements are fully linguistic elements and
they are a peculiarity of sign languages; furthermore, it confirms that features of
evaluative morphology constitute a morphological type.
4.8 Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL)
Adamorobe Sign Language is the sign language used in a village called
Adamorobe, in the Eastern Region of Ghana. It is the language of approximately 41
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Deaf people28
but it is also used by many hearing people living in the village. The
Adamorobe village is characterised by a high incidence of hereditary deafness, which
was as high as 11% in 1961 but it dropped drastically to about 1% in 2012. AdaSL has
developed from a local sign language but it is historically unrelated to Ghanian Sign
Language (GSL), which is used in the schools for the Deaf in Ghana threatening the
survival of AdaSL29
.
In her description of AdaSL, Nyst (2007) highlights that this language makes
extensive use of mouth gestures and “multi-channelledness” (Nyst 2007: 49), since it
uses many articulators (hands, body, facial expression, etc.) simultaneously.
Particularly, Nyst (2007) points out that AdaSL displays a marked preference for
simultaneous manual-oral constructions especially in the semantic field of size and
shape. In addition to the use of some lexical signs, AdaSL is characterised by a very
peculiar strategy to convey size and shape: the use of “measuring stick signs” (Nyst
2007: 137). They basically consist in the combination of the two hands, one functioning
as a measuring stick for the other. The most common are: size of thumb tip, size of hand
and size of arm. They are mainly used to modify signs for crops or other foodstuffs,
instruments or other small objects. Interestingly, they can be used in structures
belonging to evaluative morphology when they are articulated after the noun they
modify, and combined with specific mouthing usually accompanying adjectival signs
conveying the size of an entity. Example 36 shows the manual sign for the noun
BANANA modified by the manual stick sign and the mouthing ‘abo’ which is typically
related to the adjective BIG:
36) BANANA MS: hand-------
‘A relatively big banana of about the size of a hand’
(Nyst 2007: 149)
Figure 89 provides an example of this simultaneous construction:
28
http://www.ethnologue.com/language/ads/18 29
The reader is referred to Nyst (2007) for further details about the Deaf Community of
Adamorobe.
[Abo-repeated]
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Figure 89. MS:hand+the mouthing usually accompanying BIG [abo] 14 (Nyst 2007: 150)
Moreover, if a banana is considered of relatively big size, a bottle of the same
size and shape is considered small, in fact the relative measuring stick sign is
accompanied by the mouthing [spread lips, teeth closed+ttt] which is usually associated
to the adjective SMALL:
37) BOTTLE MS: hand-----
‘A relatively small bottle of about the size of a hand’
(Nyst 2007: 150)
As can be seen in example 37, in this case the mouthing marks both the noun and its
measuring stick sign. Moreover, some signs may be modified without recurring to
adjectives or measuring stick signs but simply reducing or enlarging their articulation.
All these strategies are definitely strategies belonging to the domain of evaluative
morphology and, once again, this is the confirmation that a common and productive
strategy among sign language consists in conveying diminutive and augmentative
features without the articulation of manual adjectival signs.
[spread lips, teeth closed+ttt]
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Conclusions
This dissertation had a double aim:
iii. providing a systematic description of evaluative strategies in Italian Sign
Language;
iv. determining whether Cinque’s (2015) proposal of a finer-grained extended
projection of the NP characterised by functional projections hosting diminutive,
augmentative, endearment and pejorative features in their head positions, could
account for LIS as well.
These objectives arouse from the desire to increase our knowledge of the nominal
domain in LIS, which is still quite unexplored, and to provide further evidence that
principles characterising world languages account for all languages, oral or signed,
independently from the modality through which they are conveyed.
Since the two objectives belong to different domains, namely morphology and syntax, it
was necessary to conduct my research through a double approach, descriptive and
syntactic, considering Baker’s (1985) Mirror Principle as a starting point:
“Morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa)”
(Baker 1985: 375). For instance, to fulfil the syntactic analysis of evaluative strategies
in LIS, I have begun by presenting the theories that led to the development of the
Cartographic Project, which characterises the Theoretical Framework of this work.
Particularly, I have dealt with Cinque’s (2005a) derivation of Greenberg’s (1963)
Universal 20 and his proposal of different kinds of NP movement through the syntactic
structure that would account for the linear order of all languages. One of the movement
described, namely NP movement with pied-piping (cfr. § 1.4.1) is the movement that,
according to Bertone (2007), concerns the NP in LIS. Furthermore, I have presented
Cinque’s (2015) recent assumption of the existence of specific functional projections,
within the extended projection of the NP, hosting diminutive, augmentative, endearment
and pejorative features in their head positions, in order to examine whether the order of
these FPs would account for LIS as well. Consequently, considering that evaluative
processes intervene on the morphology of the noun modifying it to convey evaluative
features, in Chapter 2 I have described morphological processes in sign languages,
focusing my attention on those LIS elements involved in evaluative strategies, as
individuated in a preliminary study conducted by Petitta et al. (2015): non-manual
124
markers and classifiers. From their analysis, it resulted that non-manual markers, in
their adverbial function of adding meaning to the citational form of the sign, and
classifiers play a crucial role in conveying evaluative features. They account for three
typical evaluative strategies: manual sequential/simultaneous evaluation, non-manual
simultaneous evaluation and reduplicative evaluation. Non-manual markers with a
linguistic function are generally considered bound morphemes, so for their similarity
with evaluative affixes in oral languages, I assumed that non-manual markers conveying
diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features could be considered
morphemes hosted in the head positions of the FPs proposed by Cinque (2015). This
assumption derived from the fact that NMMs marking nouns usually also spread over
other modifiers belonging to the nominal constituent, namely adjectives or classifiers,
and from the consideration that the NP, by moving upwards and pied-piping the
categories that dominate it, could incorporate these features. Successively, I have
presented the peculiarities of LIS adjectives in order to have a complete picture of the
domain in which the noun deals with its modifiers. By comparing the studies by Bertone
(2007) and Mantovan (2015), I have identified the order of the functional projections
hosting meaningful elements within the extended projection of the NP in LIS, ordering
them with respect to the position of the FPs hosting evaluative features.
Therefore, the resulting order of the meaningful elements within the extended projection
of the noun phrase turned out to be:
It was necessary, though, to test this hypothesis with more naturalistic data
produced by LIS native signers. Consequently, I have elaborated a protocol to collect
data that could be suitable to develop both a qualitative analysis, in order to provide a
description of each feature, and a syntactic analysis, through the examination of the
order of modifiers within the noun phrase. My research has been divided in two phases:
first, I have analysed a corpus of fairy tales and then I have examined elicited data,
collected through tasks of picture naming, narration and grammaticality judgements that
I previously designed. I have conducted the investigation bearing in mind Petitta et al.
(2015) study, considering as evaluative strategies those instances in which diminutive,
augmentative, endearment and pejorative features were conveyed through the
modification of the sign for the noun or of its classifier involving specific NMMs or
modifications of the signs articulations, without articulating adjectives referring to the
DP>NumP>ClP>Num°>APvalue>Aug°>Pej°>Dim°>End°>APsize>APshape>APcolour>APnation>NP
125
same semantic fields. The first stage has been useful to attest the presence of
diminutive, augmentative, endearment and pejorative features in LIS, but since the
context was restricted to fairy tales, the second stage was needed to examine evaluative
strategies in productions involving daily situations.
Interestingly, from both the fairy tale corpus and elicited data, the more
productive evaluative strategy resulted to be the production of the noun followed by a
classifier, both marked by the non-manual markers typical of the evaluative feature
involved. These can be defined examples of manual-oral simultaneous evaluation, since
evaluative features are conveyed not only through the adjunction of the classifier to the
sign for the noun, but also through NMMs simultaneously articulated to both nouns and
classifiers. The informants realised the same strategies to convey evaluative features: as
far as manual signs are concerned, the articulations of signs for nouns and classifiers
were reduced to convey diminutive features and enlarged to convey augmentative ones;
as far as non-manual markers are concerned, the informants produced:
i. for diminutive features: squinted eyes and tensed mouth or furrowed eyebrows
and lips/tongue protrusion;
ii. for augmentative features: open eyes and slightly grinding teeth/mouth shaping
O/A or furrowed eyebrows and inflated cheeks/teeth biting the inferior lip;
iii. for endearment features: relaxed eyebrows, lips protrusion and sweet expression
of the eyes;
iv. for pejorative features: disgusted or angry facial expression, furrowed eyebrows
and tensed face or lips/tongue protrusion.
Furthermore, I have found a productive occurrence of role shift mostly to convey
endearment and pejorative features, thanks to the possibility to assume the characters’
point of view.
However I have observed some instances of variability among the elicited data,
in particular within the picture naming task. First of all, I have noticed that often not all
elements belonging to the noun phrase were marked by the same NMMs, and
informants spread NMMs conveying evaluative features only over the classifier or the
adjective articulated after the sign for the noun, leaving the noun neutral. From a deeper
analysis, these instances resulted to be unremarkable since they mostly occurred in the
picture naming task, in which the informants may have been led to first nominate the
referent and then to modify it, paying particular attention to the NMMs involved. This
hypothesis was confirmed from the fact that the same referents, which I inserted on
126
purpose in the story of the narration task, in that more spontaneous context occurred
marked with NMMs.
Within the same picture naming task, I observed a higher occurrence of
adjectives conveying pejorative features (the same two articulated by all informants), so
maybe this could be the preferred strategy for this feature. What is remarkable about
these examples is that these adjectives conveying the referents pejorative features,
always occurred after the articulation of the classifiers defining the referents size or
shape, resulting in the unexpected order of articulation N+CL+A instead of N+A+CL,
as I assumed following Bertone (2007). This led me to hypothesize the existence of a
lower functional projection, nearer to the NP, hosting classifier of size and shape that
could explain the occurrence of these classifiers before the adjective of value, which
belongs to a functional projection positioned higher in the syntactic structure. Of course,
more informants and more data would be needed to test this hypothesis, which would be
also useful to exclude the possibility that these classifiers are instead adjectives realised
through classifiers.
Other instances of variability regarded the classifiers selected for the referents;
sometimes, the three informants chose three different classifiers, paying attention to
different aspects of the same element. This is another aspect that would need a deeper
investigation since the classifier system in LIS is rich and still quite unexplored.
By analysing the data selected from the narration task, I have observed the
higher occurrence of the sequence N+CL (marked by NMMs) to convey evaluative
features but I also detected some curios instances: one informant in particular produced
the same NMMs of ‘open eyes’ related to three different context: conveying
augmentative features, surprise or marking a polar question. These examples
demonstrate the richness of the NMMs system and the different functions they may
carry out depending on the context.
Finally, I have verified that evaluative features constitute a pervasive and
productive strategy in Italian Sign Language thanks to the grammaticality judgements
task: all informants accepted and recognised the screenshots I selected from the Fairy
Tale Corpus in which the signer conveyed evaluative features through the direct
modification of the articulation of the sign for the noun or by marking it with NMMs.
After having analysed all the data, I have obtained a panoramic view from which
results that the order of functional projections hosting diminutive, augmentative,
endearment and pejorative features proposed by Cinque (2015) after having examined
127
several oral languages, accounts for LIS as well, and considering their behaviour in the
modification of nouns, NMMs can be considered morphemes hosted in the head
positions of these specific functional projections between APvalue and APsize, within the
extended projection of the NP.
In the last section of my work, I have attempted to investigate whether evaluative
strategies are LIS specific or characterise a productive strategy among other sign
languages. Therefore, I have reviewed the studies carried out in seven sign languages of
the world and I observed that they all realise evaluative strategies in the same way LIS
does, namely through the articulation of NMMs and classifiers. This is a remarkable
result, since it defines evaluative strategies as a morphological type and confirms the
importance of sign language linguistic research, to increase the knowledge of each sign
language and similarities among them. Furthermore, to analyse sign languages within
the domain of Generative Linguistics and Linguistic Typology is fundamental to
observe whether Principles underlying the Language Faculty are universal and hold for
all languages, independently from the modality through which they are conveyed.
In conclusion, this work is an attempt to increase our knowledge about LIS
nominal domain, describing a phenomenon that was still unexplored, integrating a
descriptive and syntactic approach during the analysis of the data. Within the domain of
linguistic typology, instead, I interestingly observed that evaluative strategies are
detected in all sign languages I examined and, following the definition by Aronoff et al.
(2004) (cfr. § 2.3.1), they constitute a morphological type.
What remains to be investigate is:
i. the regular (or not) occurrence of the same NMMs over all the elements
belonging to the nominal domain (nouns, adjectives, classifiers);
ii. the existence of more functional projections hosting different kinds of classifiers
within the extended projection of the NP, to account for the unexpected order of
articulation N+CL+A observed;
iii. investigate the existence of a hierarchy within the classifier system.
128
Appendix 1
129
Appendix 2
1
2
3
4
5
6
130
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BSL Timeline: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dcal/bslhistory/timeline-bsl
Fairy Tale Cenerentola Sorda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gQ-5I0q_uE
Fairy Tale Stella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlGFKGd5n9Y
Information about world sign languages: http://www.ethnologue.com,
http://www.eud.eu/Germany-i-184.html
Italian Sign Language Online Dictionary: https://www.spreadthesign.com/it/