Comparative Correlatives in Italian Sign Language Corrélatifs comparatifs dans la langue des signes italienne.docVIP

Comparative Correlatives in Italian Sign Language* Carlo Geraci Department of Psychology Univeristà degli Studi Milano-Bicocca Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo, 1 20126 – Milano, Italy carlo.geraci@unimib.it ABSTRACT. Comparative correlative constructions (the more you run, the more you sweat) are widespread across the languages of the world (Taylor, 2006). Nonetheless, the peculiarities of this construction raise questions that challenge our understanding of the syntax of this specific construction and, more broadly, of how the core and the periphery of Universal Grammar (UG) are organized (Culicover and Jackendoff, 1999). To date, no study has investigated the comparative correlative construction in any sign language. The purpose of the present paper is to fill this gap and provide a survey of the main characteristics of comparative correlatives in Italian Sign Language (LIS). KEY WORDS: comparative correlative, Italian Sign Language (LIS), subordination, island constraints in Sign Language. * Many thanks for helpful discussions on various parts of the paper are due to Mirko Santoro, Emiliano Mereghetti, Mirko Pasquotto, Carlo Cecchetto, Sandro Zucchi, Francesca Panzeri, Caterina Donati, Fabio Del Prete and TAL reviewers. Thanks are due also to the audiences of the III Convegno Nazionale della Lingua Italiana dei Segni (Verona, Italy), the workshop on La grammatica della Lingua dei Segni Italiana (Venice, Italy), and the III Sign Language Week (Vitoria, Basque Country), and the Colloque de Syntaxe et Semantique a Paris CSSP 2007. Special thanks are due to the informants: Pino Amorini, Graziella Anselmo, Giammarco Eletto, Anna Folchi, Emiliano Mereghetti, Mirko Pasquotto, Mirko Santoro. All errors are my own. TAL. Volume 48 – n° 3/2007, pages 55 to 92  52 TAL. Volume 48 – n° 3/2007 1. Introduction Despite the fact that comparative correlatives (he