Home Linguistics & Semiotics 2 On a low and a high position for diminutive non-manual markers in Italian Sign Language
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

2 On a low and a high position for diminutive non-manual markers in Italian Sign Language

  • Elena Fornasiero
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill
Explore this Subject How to publish with us
Diminutives across Languages, Theoretical Frameworks and Linguistic Domains
This chapter is in the book Diminutives across Languages, Theoretical Frameworks and Linguistic Domains

Abstract

In this paper, I use diminutives in Italian Sign Language (Lingua dei Segni Italiana, LIS) as a testing ground to account for the universality of the distinction between word formation from roots and word formation from words (Arad 2003), as well as for the existence of two positions dedicated to diminutive morphemes (De Belder, Faust, and Lampitelli 2014) cross-modally. I consider the nonmanual markers (NMMs) typically encoding diminution in LIS (Fornasiero 2023) and argue that their double role as compositional and non-compositional diminutives can be captured in terms of syntactic structure. I analyze LIS data against the predictions formulated by De Belder, Faust, and Lampitelli (2014) and discuss how their proposal seems to hold for both diminutives and other evaluative NMMs, which in some instances encode a non-compositional meaning. Therefore, I suggest that the assumption of two positions for diminutive morphemes can be more generally an assumption of the existence of two positions dedicated to phonological (non-compositional) and morphological (compositional) NMMs in LIS, below and above the category head, respectively. This paper thus provides support for both Arad’s (2003) and De Belder, Faust, and Lampitelli’s (2014) proposals by extending the empirical investigation to a visual-gestural language.

Abstract

In this paper, I use diminutives in Italian Sign Language (Lingua dei Segni Italiana, LIS) as a testing ground to account for the universality of the distinction between word formation from roots and word formation from words (Arad 2003), as well as for the existence of two positions dedicated to diminutive morphemes (De Belder, Faust, and Lampitelli 2014) cross-modally. I consider the nonmanual markers (NMMs) typically encoding diminution in LIS (Fornasiero 2023) and argue that their double role as compositional and non-compositional diminutives can be captured in terms of syntactic structure. I analyze LIS data against the predictions formulated by De Belder, Faust, and Lampitelli (2014) and discuss how their proposal seems to hold for both diminutives and other evaluative NMMs, which in some instances encode a non-compositional meaning. Therefore, I suggest that the assumption of two positions for diminutive morphemes can be more generally an assumption of the existence of two positions dedicated to phonological (non-compositional) and morphological (compositional) NMMs in LIS, below and above the category head, respectively. This paper thus provides support for both Arad’s (2003) and De Belder, Faust, and Lampitelli’s (2014) proposals by extending the empirical investigation to a visual-gestural language.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. 1 Introduction: Diminutives across languages, theoretical frameworks and linguistic domains 1
  4. Part I: Theoretical approaches to diminutive formation
  5. 2 On a low and a high position for diminutive non-manual markers in Italian Sign Language 37
  6. 3 Diminutive or singulative? The suffixes -in and -k in Russian 65
  7. 4 Slavic diminutive morphology: An interplay of scope, templates and paradigms 89
  8. 5 Diminutive formation in Spanish: Evidence for word morphology 115
  9. 6 The syllable as the basis for word formation: Evidence from diminutives, hypocoristics and clippings in English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish and French 131
  10. Part II: Corpus-based and other empirical studies
  11. 7 The Swedish suffix -is and its place within evaluative morphology 153
  12. 8 Diminutives and number: Theoretical predictions and empirical evidence from German in Austria 179
  13. 9 Diminutive verbs in the Austrian language area: Morphological and semantic challenges 205
  14. 10 Challenges in analyzing Polish diminutives 231
  15. 11 Diminutives among other -k(a) words in colloquial Russian: Frequency and suffix variation 253
  16. Part III: Sociolinguistic, pragmatic and acquisitional studies
  17. 12 Borrowed or inspired? Komi diminutive under Russian influence 277
  18. 13 Acquisition of diminutives in Russian and Estonian from a typological perspective 305
  19. 14 Morphological richness and priority of pragmatics over semantics in Italian, Arabic, German and English diminutives 335
  20. 15 Diminutive variation in Austrian Standard German: A corpuslinguistic study 363
  21. 16 Gender discrepancies and evaluative gender shift: A cross-linguistic study within Distributed Morphology 387
  22. Index 415
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110792874-002

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. 1 Introduction: Diminutives across languages, theoretical frameworks and linguistic domains 1
  4. Part I: Theoretical approaches to diminutive formation
  5. 2 On a low and a high position for diminutive non-manual markers in Italian Sign Language 37
  6. 3 Diminutive or singulative? The suffixes -in and -k in Russian 65
  7. 4 Slavic diminutive morphology: An interplay of scope, templates and paradigms 89
  8. 5 Diminutive formation in Spanish: Evidence for word morphology 115
  9. 6 The syllable as the basis for word formation: Evidence from diminutives, hypocoristics and clippings in English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish and French 131
  10. Part II: Corpus-based and other empirical studies
  11. 7 The Swedish suffix -is and its place within evaluative morphology 153
  12. 8 Diminutives and number: Theoretical predictions and empirical evidence from German in Austria 179
  13. 9 Diminutive verbs in the Austrian language area: Morphological and semantic challenges 205
  14. 10 Challenges in analyzing Polish diminutives 231
  15. 11 Diminutives among other -k(a) words in colloquial Russian: Frequency and suffix variation 253
  16. Part III: Sociolinguistic, pragmatic and acquisitional studies
  17. 12 Borrowed or inspired? Komi diminutive under Russian influence 277
  18. 13 Acquisition of diminutives in Russian and Estonian from a typological perspective 305
  19. 14 Morphological richness and priority of pragmatics over semantics in Italian, Arabic, German and English diminutives 335
  20. 15 Diminutive variation in Austrian Standard German: A corpuslinguistic study 363
  21. 16 Gender discrepancies and evaluative gender shift: A cross-linguistic study within Distributed Morphology 387
  22. Index 415
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 7.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110792874-002/html
Scroll to top button