WH-duplication in Italian Sign Language (LIS)
Carlo Cecchetto |
Laboratoire de linguistique formelle, Université Paris Diderot
This paper focuses on those WH-questions in Italian Sign Language (LIS) featuring two lexically identical WH-signs. We show that WH1 (the first WH in linear order) is shorter than WH2 (the second WH in liner order). However, there is evidence that this different duration is due to a phrase final lengthening, as WH2 occupies a sentence-final position. We therefore conclude that the two WH-signs are identical full copies: one sitting in Spec,CP on the right in LIS and the other one sitting in Spec,FocusP on the left. We show that this construction yields a (focused) cleft question interpretation and we speculate that both copies are phonologically realized because the WH-signs in Spec,CP and Spec,FocusP are the heads of two distinct chains. Finally, we distinguish identical WH-duplication from improper WH-duplication, namely cases where one of the two WH-elements is what we call Qartichoke, an underspecified interrogative sign only surfacing in WH-questions.
References
Aboh, Enoch O. & Roland Pfau
2010 What’s a wh-word got to do with it? In
Paola Benincà &
Nicola Munaro (eds.),
Mapping the left periphery: The cartography of syntactic structures, vol. 5, 91–124. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abner, Natasha
2010 Wh-words that go bump in the right. In Proceedings of the 28th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 24–32. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Barbiers, Sjef, Olaf Koeneman, Marika Lekakou, & Margreet van der Ham
2008 Microvariation in syntactic doubling. Bingley: Emerald.


Bertone, Carmela & Anna Cardinaletti
2011 Il sistema pronominale della lingua dei segni italiana. In
Cardinaletti,
Cecchetto &
Donati (eds.), 141–156.

Branchini, Chiara
2007 On relativization and clefting in Italian Sign Language (LIS). PhD dissertation, Università di Urbino, Italy.
Branchini Chiara & Caterina Donati
Branchini, Chiara & Carlo Geraci
2011 L’ordine dei costituenti in LIS: risultati preliminari. In
Cardinaletti,
Cecchetto &
Donati (eds.), 109–122.

Cardinaletti, Anna & Michal Starke
1999 The typology of structural deficiency. A case-study of the three classes of pronouns. In
Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.),
Clitics in the languages of Europe. EALT/EUROTYP 20–5, 145–233. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Cardinaletti, Anna, Carlo Cecchetto & Caterina Donati
(eds.) 2011 Grammatica, lessico e dimensioni di variazione nella LIS. FrancoAngeli: Milano, Italy.

Cecchetto, Carlo
2012 Sentence types. In
Roland Pfau,
Markus Steinbach &
Bencie Woll (eds.),
Sign language. An international handbook (HSK — Handbooks of linguistics and communication science), 292–315. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.


Cecchetto, Carlo, Carlo Geraci & Sandro Zucchi
2006 Strategies of relativization in Italian Sign Language.
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25. 945–975.


Cecchetto, Carlo, Carlo Geraci & Sandro Zucchi
2009 Another way to mark syntactic dependencies: The case for right-peripheral specifiers in sign languages.
Language 85(2). 278–320.


Checchetto, Alessandra, Carlo Cecchetto, Carlo Geraci, Maria Teresa Guasti & Sandro Zucchi
2011 Una varietà molto speciale: la LISt (Lingua dei Segni Italiana tattile). In
Cardinaletti,
Cecchetto &
Donati (eds.), 201–211.

Chomsky, Noam
1995 The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam
2008 On phases. In
Robert Freidin,
Carlos P. Otero &
Maria-Luisa Zubizarreta (eds.),
Foundational issues in linguistic theory: Essays in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, 133–166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.


Gazdar, Gerald
1979 Pragmatics, implicature, presupposition, and logical form. New York: Academic Press.

Geraci, Carlo
2006a LIS (lingua dei segni italiana) tra ricerca e divulgazione. PhD Dissertation, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.
Geraci, Carlo
2006b Negation in LIS (Italian Sign Language). In
Leah Bateman &
Cherlon Ussery (eds.),
Proceedings of NELS 35, 217–229. Amherst, MA: GLSA.

Geraci, Carlo, Katia Battaglia, Anna Cardinaletti, Carlo Cecchetto, Caterina Donati, Serena Giudice & Emiliano Mereghetti
2011 The LIS corpus project: A discussion of sociolinguistic variation in the lexicon.
Sign Language Studies 11(4). 528–574.


Geraci, Carlo & Robert Bayley
2011 Chi, cosa, dove, perché, quando: la distribuzione dei segni wh- in LIS. In
Cardinaletti,
Cecchetto &
Donati (eds.), 125–141.

Geraci, Carlo, Robert Bayley, Anna Cardinaletti, Carlo Cecchetto & Caterina Donati
2015 Variation in Italian Sign Language (LIS): The Case of Wh-signs.
Linguistics 53(1). 125–151.


Geraci, Carlo & Carlo Cecchetto
Kato, Mary A. & Ilza Ribeiro
Kayne, Richard
1994 The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Law, Paul
2005 Questions and clefts in Malagasy. In
Jeffrey Heinz &
Dimitrios Ntelitheos (eds.), Proceedings of AFLA XII,
UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 12, 195–209.
Munaro, Nicola
1999 Sintagmi interrogativi nei dialetti italiani. Padova: Unipress.

Neidle Carol, Judy Kegl, Dawn MacLaughlin, Benjamin Bahan & Robert Lee
2000 The syntax of American Sign Language: Functional categories and hierarchical structure. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

Nunes, Jairo
2004 Linearization of chains and sideward movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Nunes, Jairo & Ronice M. de Quadros
2006 Duplication of WH-elements in Brazilian Sign Language. In
Leah Bateman &
Cherlon Ussery (eds.),
Proceedings of NELS 35, 463–477. Amherst, MA: GLSA.

Paul, Ileana
2001 Concealed pseudo-clefts.
Lingua 111. 707–727.


Petronio, Karen & Diane Lillo-Martin
1997 WH-Movement and the position of Spec-CP: Evidence from American Sign Language.
Language 73(1). 18–57.


Poletto, Cecilia & Jean-Yves Pollock
2004 On wh-clitics and wh-doubling in French and some North-Eastern Italian dialects.
Probus 16. 241–272.


Richards, Norvin
2010 Uttering trees. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.


Rizzi, Luigi
2001 On the position ‘‘Int(errogative)’ in the left periphery of the clause. In
Guglielmo Cinque &
Giampaolo Salvi (eds.),
Current studies in Italian syntax. Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi, 287–296. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Rizzi, Luigi
2010 On some properties of criterial freezing. In
Phoevos Panagiotidis (ed.),
The complementiser phase: Subjects and operators, 17–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Sandler, Wendy
1989 Phonological representation of the sign. Dordrecht: Foris


Sandler, Wendy & Diane Lillo-Martin
2006 Sign language and linguistics universals. Cambridge University Press.


van der Sandt, Rob A.
1988 Context and presupposition. London: Croom Helm.

Zeshan, Ulrike
(ed.) 2006 Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.

Zucchi, Sandro
2009 Along the time line: Tense and time adverbs in Italian Sign Language.
Natural Language Semantics 17. 99–139.


Zucchi, Sandro, Carol Neidle, Carlo Geraci, Quinn Duffy & Carlo Cecchetto
2010 Functional markers in sign languages. In
Diane Brentari (ed.),
Sign languages (Cambridge Language Surveys), 437–492. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.