wh-duplication in Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Chiara Branchini | Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia

Anna Cardinaletti | Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

Carlo Cecchetto | Sapienza Università di Roma

Caterina Donati | Institut Jean-Nicod CNRS Paris

Carlo Geraci

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,FocP 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,FocP 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.

Keywords: sign language, Italian Sign Language (LIS), doubling, cleft questions, wh-questions, copy theory of traces

Published online: 12 December 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.16.2.03bra

Cited by

Cited by other publications

Anne Baker, Beppie van den Bogaerde, Roland Pfau & Trude Schermer

2016. In The Linguistics of Sign Languages,

Cardinaletti, Anna

2018. In Le lingue occidentali nei 150 anni di storia di Ca’ Foscari [I libri di Ca’ Foscari , 7],

Hu, Shenai, Carlo Cecchetto & Maria Teresa Guasti

2018. A new case for structural intervention: evidence from Wenzhounese relative clauses. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 27:3 ► pp. 247 ff.

HU, SHENAI, ANNA GAVARRÓ & MARIA TERESA GUASTI

2016. Children's production of head-final relative clauses: The case of Mandarin. Applied Psycholinguistics 37:2 ► pp. 323 ff.

Mantovan, Lara & Carlo Geraci

2017. The syntax of nominal modification in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Sign Language & Linguistics 20:2 ► pp. 183 ff.

MANTOVAN, LARA, CARLO GERACI & ANNA CARDINALETTI

2019. On the cardinal system in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Journal of Linguistics 55:4 ► pp. 795 ff.

Mantovan, Lara, Beatrice Giustolisi & Francesca Panzeri

2019. Signing something while meaning its opposite: The expression of irony in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Journal of Pragmatics 142 ► pp. 47 ff.

Notarrigo, Ingrid & Laurence Meurant

2019. Conversations spontanées en langue des signes de Belgique francophone (LSFB) : fonctions et usages de la répétition. Lidil :60

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 december 2020. 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.