The Interplay Between Iconicity and Arbitrariness in Italian Sign Language (LIS) Idioms: A Theoretical Proposal for the Analysis of Signed Idioms

In this paper, we describe a virtual interpreter of the Italian sign language (Italian Sign Language, LIS). developed as part of the on--going ATLAS project, on the automatic translation from Italian to Italian Sign Language. The translation system communicates with the user through a virtual signer: the system takes as input a formal representation of a sign language sentence and produces the corresponding animation of the avatar. The architecture of the virtual signer consists of a resource planner, an executor of the planned sign animations, and an animation system.

Lexematic units and highly iconic structures in Italian sign language: new methods of analysis aided by ad hoc software.

Image recognition systems have evolved so much that they can actually be exploited to solve significant challenges today, such as facilitating communication for people with hearing impairments relying on sign languages. This project aims to apply deep learning and fine-tuning techniques to build an automatic recognition system for the Italian Sign Language (LIS). More specifically, our goal is a real-time image recognition system capable of accurately identifying the letters of the LIS alphabet provided by a user in a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) framework by means of Python’s Open Source Computer Vision (OpenCV) library and two models based on convolutional neural networks, namely CNN and VGG19, applied for large-scale image and video recognition. In addition to testing the performance of different architectures, our work constitutes a novel step towards the application of automatic image recognition techniques with the recently acknowledged LIS and a lately released open-source dataset, also representing the only source available for this type of research on single-handed isolated signs. This project may not only play a role in the interpretation and learning of the Italian Sign Language, encouraging its spread and study, but also in the inclusion of hearing-impaired individuals in the language research domain.

This article offers an overview of the current situation of sign language interpreters operating in Italy, with reference to the wider European context. Although the profession is not yet formally recognized in Italy, it has gained more and more visibility in recent years thanks to TV broadcasting. However, the characteristics and working fields of sign language interpreters are still largely unknown to non-professionals. This article starts with a description of the main working language used by interpreters, namely Italian Sign Language (LIS), and of its main users (Deaf people), who can be considered a socio-cultural community. Then, the article provides an overview of the historical evolution of interpreters, focusing on training options and professional contexts. Particular emphasis is given to the current legislation concerning sign language interpreters at the national and international levels, with a focus on the national associations of interpreters.

Little is known about the nature of fingerspelling during sign language interpretation. In this small-scale, exploratory study, we examined the fingerspelling of interpreters working in five different sign languages: American Sign Language (ASL), Australian Sign Language (Auslan), British Sign Language (BSL), Irish Sign Language (ISL), and Italian Sign Language (LIS). Sixteen interpreters were video-recorded as they rendered President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural address in their country’s sign language. After completing their interpretations, the participants engaged in a retrospective interview about their work. The data were analyzed both quantitatively (for frequency and type of fingerspelling) and qualitatively (for factors influencing fingerspelling). Results indicate that the most fingerspelled items ( n = 137) were produced in the ASL interpretations and the fewest ( n = 18) were produced in the LIS interpretations; variation between the groups was found in lexicalized fingerspelling and the fingerspelling of place names. We suggest that the variation in fingerspelling both within and between groups may be explained by sociolinguistic factors, including interpreters’ language attitudes and perceptions of the deaf audience. This exploratory study provides a first step in investigating the fingerspelling of interpreters in a variety of sign languages.

This paper explores the relationship between memory, language, and embodied cognition by analyzing how sign languages encode the concept of memory through bodily referents. While memory is often associated with the brain from a neurological perspective (Baddeley [1974]; Cann & Ross [1989]; Ackerman [1992]), different languages metaphorically locate memory in various parts of the body, such as the heart, muscles, or even the environment. Sentences like “This is etched on my heart” (English) refer to something that has made a big impression on me, making it easy for me to remember. Other languages refer to memory as residing in various places in the body, such as the ventral area of the body or the environment itself (in Japanese culture, for instance). Sign languages provide an opportunity to examine this phenomenon visually and spatially, offering insights into how bodily experience influences linguistic representation. Drawing on theories of embodiment, including work from neuroscience, psycholinguistics, and sign linguistics, this study investigates the bodily locations used to express memory across five sign languages: Italian Sign Language (LIS), Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS), American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL), and Japanese Sign Language (JSL). Using data from Spreadthesign and other linguistic resources, the study identifies commonalities in how these languages position memory-related signs primarily around the head, supporting the idea that cognitive and linguistic structures align with physical and cultural perceptions of memory storage. The research is grounded in conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson [1981]), which posits that abstract concepts are understood through embodied experiences and incorporates reflections on the semantic approach to sign language studies (Cuxac [2004]). Findings suggest that while spoken languages may metaphorically associate memory with different body parts, sign languages provide a more direct visual and spatial representation of these associations. By analyzing the lexicon of “memory” across different sign languages, the study offers evidence of a shared cognitive and bodily foundation in language structure, supporting the hypothesis that linguistic meaning is deeply embedded in human perception and bodily experience. Furthermore, this work contributes to ongoing discussions about the relationship between sign and spoken languages. While sign languages have often been studied in relation to their spoken counterparts, they offer unique insights into how language interacts with cognition and physicality. This study also aligns with previous research on iconicity in sign language (Cuxac [2000a, 2000b]; Wilcox [2000]; Taub [2001]), emphasizing the role of the body in structuring linguistic meaning. The findings challenge traditional distinctions between phonology and morphology in linguistic theory, reinforcing the need for models that account for the multimodal and spatial dimensions of sign language. By bridging linguistic, cognitive, and neurological perspectives, this paper underscores the importance of embodied cognition in understanding language development and meaning construction. The analysis of memory-related lexicon in sign languages not only highlights the influence of bodily experience in linguistic representation but also opens new avenues for exploring how language reflects fundamental cognitive processes across different modalities.

The role of iconicity and simultaneity for efficient communication: The case of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Sign languages ​​arise from the need of communities of deaf people to communicate with each other and with others. Like all natural languages, they are tied to the traditions and cultures of the communities that invented and developed them. The sign language used in Italy is the Italian Sign Language, LIS.The strong iconicity of LIS is very interesting from the point of view of communication and didactics of astronomy, also for the hearing impaired. The signs used for astronomical concepts and objects often express the meaning and nature of what is represented, much more than a single word in the Italian language does.LIS is therefore effective not only for inclusive communication aimed at deaf people, but it can be effective for everyone, both in terms of equity and awareness of diversity and in terms of knowledge of astronomy and its link with culture and tradition.We will present a set of videos published on EduINAF, the outreach and education online magazine of the Italian National Isntitute for Astrophysics, in which the LIS is the main medium of the storytelling. Each video has subtitles, in order to make the LIS understandable for all.

Attitude role shift is a sign language strategy to report someone else’s utterance or thought. It has been analyzed either as a kind of demonstration or, alternatively, as a complex construction involving subordination plus a context-shifting operator. The present work reports the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task developed in three different sign languages (Italian Sign Language, French Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language) with the aim of providing experimental evidence about the nature of role shift. The task assessed the comprehension of indexical first-person pronouns in various syntactic contexts with and without role shift. We showed that constructions with role shift, which require context-shifting for the first-person pronoun, are never easier to comprehend than constructions without role shift that do not require context-shifting. In some cases, they are even more difficult. Additionally, we show that, in Italian Sign Language only, sentences in which the role shifted first-person pronoun is in object position are more difficult than sentences in which it is in subject position. We argue that this can be interpreted as an intervention effect and that this is an argument in favor of positing a context-shifting operator in the periphery of the role shift clause. Considering that the population of adult Deaf signers includes, besides native signers, a majority of individuals with a more or less severe delayed first language exposure, the second goal of this paper is to study the effects of age of exposure on comprehension of sentences with role shift. In the three languages under investigation, we found that native signers generally outperformed non-native signers in sentences with role shift and in subordinate clauses without role shift. This confirms that delayed language exposure has a lasting impact on adults’ comprehension of subordinate clauses of various degrees of complexity.

For some deaf people, sign language is the preferred language, the one in which they feel most comfortable. However, there are very few assessment tools developed or adapted for sign languages. The aim of this study was to translate and adapt in Italian Sign Language (LIS) the Italian version of the Youth Quality of Life Instrument-Deaf and Hard of Hearing Module (YQOL-DHH). The YQOL-DHH is a questionnaire assessing health-related quality of life in young deaf people. The guidelines provided by the authors of the original version were followed. Further controls and changes were made to take into account variability in signers' linguistic skills. This work and availability of the YQOL-DHH questionnaire in LIS, in addition to the Italian version, will ensure accessibility for Italian deaf adolescents.

Idiom comprehension of 15 patients with mild probable Alzheimer's disease was examined by means of a sentence-to-picture matching task. Patients had to choose between two pictures, one representing the figurative and the other the literal interpretation. They were also submitted to a literal sentence comprehension test and to a pencil-and-paper dual task. Whereas literal comprehension was normal in seven subjects and mildly impaired in the others, idiom comprehension was very poor in all of them and correlated with the performance on the dual task. When the idiom test was repeated using an unrelated situation as an alternative to the picture representing the figurative meaning, performance significantly improved. It was hypothesized that the response in the sentence-to-picture matching task in the case of idioms requires sentence processing followed by the suppression of the literal interpretation. Alzheimer's disease patients proved to be unable to inhibit the literal meaning, although they had not lost the idiomatic meaning. In a second experiment, 15 Alzheimer's disease patients with a comparable level of cognitive impairment were submitted to the same idiom comprehension test, and to a test of verbal explanation of the idioms. The results showed significantly better performance in the oral task than in the sentence-to-picture matching task. In oral explanation, however, Alzheimer's disease patients also produced some literal interpretation whenever this represented a possible situation in the real world. We suggest that, during idiom interpretation, the literal meaning needs to be suppressed in order to activate the figurative meaning, and we stress the fact that both linguistic and extralinguistic factors must be taken into account to explain idiom interpretation.

The present study examined whether full access to sign language as a medium for instruction could influence performance in Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Three groups of Italian participants (age range: 6-14 years) participated in the study: Two groups of deaf signing children and one group of hearing-speaking children. The two groups of deaf children differed only in their school environment: One group attended a school with a teaching assistant (TA; Sign Language is offered only by the TA to a single deaf child), and the other group attended a bilingual program (Italian Sign Language and Italian). Linguistic abilities and understanding of false belief were assessed using similar materials and procedures in spoken Italian with hearing children and in Italian Sign Language with deaf children. Deaf children attending the bilingual school performed significantly better than deaf children attending school with the TA in tasks assessing lexical comprehension and ToM, whereas the performance of hearing children was in between that of the two deaf groups. As for lexical production, deaf children attending the bilingual school performed significantly better than the two other groups. No significant differences were found between early and late signers or between children with deaf and hearing parents.

Sign Bilingualism: Language Development, Interaction, and Maintenance in Sign Language Contact Situations, ed. Carolina Plaza-Pust and Esperanza Morales-Lopez (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2008, 389 pp., hardcover, $158.00, ISBN 978-90-272-4149-8) THE EDITORS of this volume have put together twelve papers under tide Sign Bilingualism. The papers cover a variety of topics, including code mixing in Li acquisition, language planning and its impact on interpreters, language contact in development of writing, and correlation between use of space in sign language and reading comprehension. I would recommend to potential readers (and they should be numerous!) to start reading book from back. In final chapter, Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez do an excellent job of introducing relevant concepts of sign bilingualism, language maintenance and planning, and language contact. Drawing on previous studies in both spoken and signed languages, they show connections to studies presented in this volume, bridge diverse topics presented in other eleven chapters, and demonstrate relevance of linking theory and practice. Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez hope that the knowledge that can be gleaned from each of chapters in this volume also contributes to a more dynamic relationship between research-policy-practice axis that determines sign bilingualism and its perception in broader social (372). And indeed, contributions to this volume illustrate range of research on linguistic structures and their impact on language policies and also advise practitioners on putting research into practice. This which is offered as dessert, in this reviewer's opinion, ought to be instead a tantalizing appetizer. The first course offering by Baker and van der Bogaerde (1-28) discusses code mixing in input to and output from children. It is a significant contribution in understanding natural interactions within families that comprise both deaf and hearing members. Their results show that deaf children receive significantly less code blending in their input from their deaf mothers and also use less in their own utterances. Differences appear in types of code blends, with hearing children producing and receiving far more blends with Dutch as base language, while deaf children in study receive and produce almost exclusively blends with NGT as their base language. Baker and van der Bogaerde also note that most commonly blended word classes are nouns, verbs, and adjectives, results that contradict previous studies on code blending in both deaf and hearing adults (Emmorey el al. 2005; Muysken 2004). If we consider Baker and van der Bogaerde's chapter a first course, next section of book could serve as main courses. As most of contributions in this volume are concerned with bilingualism in context of deaf education, this is core of book. The chapter by Ardito et al. (137-64) stands out because it discusses practical applications of bilingual education. The authors describe in great detail activities in a bilingual kindergarten class aimed at increasing appreciation of and competence in literacy. Ardito et al. give a brief but useful introduction to bilingualism and early literacy. The remainder of chapter describes principles, methods, and successes of team teaching reading to a mixed group of hearing and deaf children using Italian Sign Language and Signed Italian. This chapter in particular will be of interest to educators looking for concrete advice on how to put what we know about sign bilingualism into practice. Educators and researchers will appreciate Krausneker's report (195-222) on language use and awareness of deaf and hearing children in a bilingual classroom in Austria. After situating her research within larger context of Austrian deaf educational and societal policies, Krausneker elaborates findings of her longitudinal study of use of OGS and German in a mixed class of hearing and deaf students. …

The aim of this study is to provide a detailed account for the phenomenon of movement epenthesis in Italian Sign Language (LIS). LIS displays at least two cases of epenthesis of movement, one affecting signs that involve contact with the body, the other affecting signs that do not (i.e. signs articulated in neutral space). The two cases of epenthesis of movement receive a unified analysis, once the mechanism of selection of the plane of articulation is spelled out. The general phenomenon of movement epenthesis is captured by a formal approach within a constraint-based framework, such as the one developed first for American Sign Language (ASL) in Brentari (1998). Cases of movement epenthesis in ASL will be discussed and compared to cases of LIS epenthesis

FOLLOWING A WELL-ESTABLISHED tradition going back to the 1980s (cf. Volterra 1987/2004), we use the name Lingua dei Segni Italiana (Italian Sign Language [LIS]) for the language used by Italian deaf people (and by Swiss deaf people living in the Ticino canton). In addition, LIS is becoming more and more visible, and its status as a minority language in the general Italian community is growing stronger due to various reasons. On the one hand, the research has shown that LIS, as other sign languages, exhibits all of the fundamental linguistic properties of natural languages: It can convey the same range of meanings and has a natural history, as spoken languages do. In particular, its phonology, morphology, and syntax are as complex as those of spoken languages like Italian.1 These facts about LIS are becoming established outside the community of sign language users partly due to the fact that a LIS program is offered by one university (Ca' Foscari Venice), and courses in LIS are now taught in various universities around the country. Another fact that is strengthening the status of LIS is that national television channels are now required to broadcast some news programs with LIS interpreting, making LIS visible to the larger population. Still, LIS has not yet received formal recognition by the Italian authorities, although various bills are sitting in the Italian parliament for the recognition of LIS as a minority language. This lack of formal recognition has serious consequences (e.g., in the educational system). Deaf children are now generally mainstreamed, and there is no guarantee that LIS will be used in their education. Interpreting, not to mention bilingual/bimodal education, is still the exception rather than the rule. In general, LIS is rarely used in institutional settings and is mostly used in private exchanges and informal gatherings. Given this scenario, it is not surprising that existing research on LIS reflects an impressive degree of variation. Still, a comprehensive sociolinguistic study of LIS varieties used around the country has not been systematically carried out until recently. This article describes an extensive collection of data from ten cities with 165 signers, which at the time of writing had just been concluded and reports on some of the data emerging from the LIS corpus resulting from this collection. Initial plans to build a systematic corpus for LIS were made in 2006 thanks to the input of Ceil Lucas, whose contribution was essential for the collection of the ASL corpus (cf. Lucas, Bayley, and Valli 2001). Lucas approached some of the Italian researchers who were working on LIS and discussed with them the guidelines of a research project that would reproduce (with some important differences) the methodology of data collection used for ASL. Adam Schembri, who worked on a corpus for AUSLAN and BSL, and Robert Bayley were also consulted in this preliminary phase. Three universities (Venice, Milan-Bicocca, and Rome- La Sapienza) joined their efforts and applied to the Italian Ministry of University for a grant. The grant proposal (PRIN 2007 project, Dimensions of Variation in Italian Sign Language) was approved (with some delay) in September 2008, so the actual data collection began in February 2009. Data collection in most cities took place in 2009, although data from two cities (Catanzaro and Milan) were collected in 2010. This article is organized as follows: In the following section we describe the general methodological issues we faced when planning the data collection and which motivated our choice of cities and participants. Then we describe the specific elicitation methods we adopted. After that, we describe in detail both the lexical variations we encountered and the results of the statistical analyses carried out on this part of the corpus. Finally, we present our conclusions. Building the LIS Corpus: Choosing Cities and Participants When we initially planned to build a LIS corpus on which we (and other researchers) could run statistical analyses to explore the sociolinguistics of LIS, we faced two problems. …