A Grammar of Italian Sign Language (LIS)

Psychological predicates express a mental state. LIS distinguishes between stative psychological predicates, like hate, be_angry, like, and fear and causative psychological predicates, like the English verb ‘scare’, indicating that an agent induces the psychological state of the experiencer. In the following example, we illustrate a stative psychological predicate represented by a transitive plain verb selecting a subject with the thematic role of experiencer, ix₁, and an object with the thematic role of theme, war.

         ix₁ war fear

         ‘I fear wars.'

Psychological stative predicates can also be transitive agreement verbs selecting a subject with the thematic role of experiencer and a direct object with the thematic role of theme, as in the following example where the verb hate is produced in the neutral space with two points of articulation.

         l-u-c-a p-a-o-l-o hate

         ‘Luca hates Paolo.’

As for causative psychological predicates, LIS employs a causative auxiliary, give_aux and a sign expressing the psychological state, like fear.

         earthquake give₁_aux fear

         ‘Earthquakes scare me.’