2.2. Borrowings from (neighboring) spoken language
As similarly observed in other countries, signers in Italy are frequently bimodal bilingual individuals: they use a sign language (i.e. LIS) and they also manage a spoken language (i.e. Italian) to some degree. Because of the bilingual skills in the signing community and the frequent interactions between signers and speakers, language contact phenomena between LIS and Italian are not infrequent. Being LIS a minority language, cross-modality influences mostly occur from Italian to LIS.
This section illustrates the various forms of borrowing that can derive from the contact with the dominant spoken language: calques (LEXICON 2.2.1), lexicalisation of fingerspelling (LEXICON 2.2.2), mouthing (LEXICON 2.2.3), and other marginal types of borrowing (LEXICON 2.2.4).
