Lara Mantovan Nominal Modification in Italian Sign Language Sign Languages and Deaf Communities Editors Annika Herrmann, Markus Steinbach, Ulrike Zeshan Editorial board Carlo Geraci, Rachel McKee, Victoria Nyst, Sibaji Panda, Marianne Rossi Stumpf, Felix Sze, Sandra Wood Volume 8 Lara Mantovan Nominal Modification in Italian Sign Language ISHARA PRESS ISBN 978-1-5015-1343-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0485-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0481-5 ISSN 2192-516X e-ISSN 2192-5178 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin and Ishara Press, Preston, UK Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com E Pluribus Unum (uncertain origin, attributed to Virgilio, Moretum, v. 103) Acknowledgements This book is a revised version of my 2015 dissertation which was approved for the PhD degree in Linguistics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. When I first plunged into the world of academic research, almost five years ago, I would never have imagined it was possible to achieve such an important milestone. Being so close to finalizing this book, I would like to look back briefly and remember and thank all the people who showed me the way, supported me, and encouraged me to grow both academically and personally. First and foremost, I would like to thank Carlo Geraci and Anna Cardinaletti for guiding me through my PhD project. I thank them both for having supported me with great professionalism throughout the process, and for providing me with a wealth of knowledge and skills. I am deeply grateful to Carlo Geraci, the first person who talked to me about the chance to start this new experience and saw my poten- tial before anyone else. Despite the geographical distance between us, I could count on him during all the stages of this work. With unceasing dedication, he was always ready to address my doubts and correct my mistakes. His rigorous scientific meth- odology and technical expertise inspired me and gave me confidence. I would like to express my gratitude to Anna Cardinaletti because she has been a constant refer- ence point in Venice. With patience and understanding, she was always willing to take into consideration my ideas – sometimes expressed in a confused way – and she helped me develop convincing arguments to sustain them. I am also very grateful to Roland Pfau, Carlo Cecchetto, Natasha Abner, and Caterina Donati for having perused and evaluated this work. Their sharp obser- vations and useful suggestions guided me during the whole revision process and helped me improve both the content and the general form of this work. Deep gratitude must be expressed to Annika Herrmann, Markus Steinbach, and the other members of the editorial staff for giving me the valuable opportu- nity to turn my PhD thesis into this book for the Sign Languages and Deaf Com- munities (SLDC) series. Special thanks go to all my LIS informants without whom a key part of this work would have not seen the light of day: Mirko Santoro, Gabriele Caia, Rosella Ottolini, and Fabio Scarpa. In particular, I thank them for their great helpfulness, willingness to collaborate, and friendship. I wish to thank Luca Des Dorides for having provided me with historical details concerning the Deaf community. I am also very grateful to all the linguistics professors and researchers with whom I had the chance to exchange ideas over the years at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, University of Milano-Bicocca, Institut Jean-Nicod in Paris, and Sign- Gram meetings. I am also thankful to the audiences who attended the confer- DOI: 10.1515/9781501504853-203 viii Acknowledgements ences at which I presented some parts of my research. They contributed towards improving the quality of this work with their comments and questions. In addition, I am thankful to my friends for their moral support and true friendship. I was blessed with hugs and pats on the back when I needed them. For understanding my long hours on my laptop and for his love and encour- agement, I am deeply grateful to my significant other, Matteo. I thank him for tolerating my mood swings, pushing me to overcome obstacles, and making me take breaks every now and then. Finally, I am profoundly indebted to my family for all their love and support. I thank all those who, motivated by unconditional love, have always allowed me to look to the future with confidence and serenity. I am especially grateful to my mom for having instilled in me the tenacity to face obstacles and new challenges, as well as the humility to realize that there is always more to achieve. Needless to say, any error that might be contained in this book is the exclu- sive responsibility of the author. Table of contents Acknowledgments vii List of figures xii List of tables xiv Notation conventions xv List of abbreviations xvii Introduction 1 Part I: Theoretical Background 1 Three theoretical dimensions of inquiry 7 1.1 Introduction 7 1.2 Linguistic typology 8 1.2.1 General framework 8 1.2.2 Working in the framework 11 1.2.3 Word order typology 13 1.2.4 The relevance of sign languages for linguistic typology 15 1.3 Generative linguistics 16 1.3.1 General framework 17 1.3.2 Working in the framework 24 1.3.3 Generative approaches to word order 25 1.3.4 The relevance of sign languages for generative linguistics 29 1.4 Sociolinguistics 31 1.4.1 General framework 31 1.4.2 Working in the framework 47 1.4.3 Sociolinguistic influences on word order 40 1.4.4 The relevance of sign languages for sociolinguistics 41 1.5 Summary 43 x Table of contents 2 State of the art on nominal modification 45 2.1 Introduction 45 2.2 Universal 20 46 2.2.1 A formal derivation 48 2.2.2 Recent typological developments 52 2.3 Fine-grained nominal modification 56 2.3.1 The extended projection of the NP 56 2.3.2 The syntax of quantified expressions 64 2.4 Nominal modification: the view from sign languages 66 2.4.1 DP-internal order in sign languages 67 2.4.2 DP-internal order in LIS 71 2.5 Summary 74 Part II: Methodological Issues 3. Methodology 77 3.1 Introduction 77 3.2 Data collection 77 3.2.1 Corpus data 78 3.2.2 Elicited judgments and narration tasks 83 3.3 Data annotation 88 3.3.1 ELAN 88 3.3.2 Coding scheme 91 3.4 Quantitative analysis 96 3.4.1 Data extraction 96 3.4.2 Statistical analysis 100 3.4.3 Statistical variables 102 3.4.4 Mixed model 104 3.5 Summary 113 Part III: Empirical Studies 4 The distribution of nominal modifiers 117 4.1 Introduction 117 4.2 Results and analysis 118 4.3 Discussion 132 4.4 Summary 141 Table of contents xi 5 The duration of nominal modifiers 142 5.1 Introduction 142 5.2 Results and analysis 142 5.3 Discussion 150 5.4 Summary 153 6 The syntax of cardinal numerals in LIS 154 6.1 Introduction 154 6.2 The cardinal system in LIS 155 6.3 The cardinals puzzle 159 6.4 Understanding the puzzle 161 6.4.1 First confounder: the case of one 162 6.4.2 Second confounder: Measure Phrases 169 6.4.3 New insights from new data 171 6.5 Analysis 176 6.5.1 Explaining the distribution of cardinals 177 6.5.2 Explaining the exceptionality of Measure Phrases 182 6.6 Summary 184 7 Closing remarks 186 7.1 Introduction 186 7.2 Final assessment of the main findings... 186 7.2.1 ... with respect to linguistic typology 187 7.2.2 ... with respect to generative linguistics 188 7.2.3 ... with respect to sociolinguistics 190 7.3 Innovative contribution to the field 191 7.4 Avenues for future research 193 References 195 Index 203 List of figures 1: Geographical distribution of the strategies for marking polar questions 12 2: Y-model 19 3: X-bar format 21 4: Merge of the verb and its arguments in D-structure 22 5: Merge of the auxiliary in D-structure 22 6: Syntactic movement in S-structure 23 7: Clause structure according to the Principles-and-Parameters framework 26 8: DP structure according to Cinque (2005) 49 9: DP structure according to Abels and Neeleman (2009) 51 10: Cartographic hierarchy of the NP extended projection (Cinque, 2012) 58 11: Two structural sources for adjectives (Cinque, 2010) 60 12: Positions available for possessive modifiers (Alexiadou et al., 2007) 62 13: Position of cardinals functioning as quantifiers in the syntactic tree 64 14: Position of cardinals functioning as quantitative adjectives in the syntactic tree 65 15: Informant in frontal position 84 16: iMovie dialog box and its components 85 17: Picture story for the narration task 86 18: ELAN dialog box and its components 90 19: ELAN annotations 91 20: ELAN template 95 21: ELAN multiple layer search 97 22: Results of the multiple layer search in ELAN 98 23: Spreadsheet file containing the dataset 99 24: R Console 101 25: General distribution of nominal modifiers in the corpus 119 26: Distribution of nominal modifiers according to their typology 120 27: ix-1_poss, pointing possessive 121 28: poss-1_wrist, possessive with wrist rotation 121 29: poss-1_open, possessive with open handshape 122 30: Probability of modifiers occurring in postnominal position according to their typology 129 31: Probability of modifiers occurring in postnominal position according to their adjacency to the noun 130 32: Probability of modifiers occurring in postnominal position according to signers’ age 131 DOI: