LIS signs are frequently accompanied by mouthings, the voiceless reproduction of the corresponding Italian words. This fact is probably due to the strong oralist tradition in Italian deaf education. There is an ongoing debate about the status of mouthings. Indeed, it is not yet clear whether they constitute a phonological building block of signs or a case of code blending (i.e. simultaneous use of two languages). Assessing which of these two hypotheses is correct falls out of the scope of this grammar. The section dealing with the non-native lexicon (LEXICON 2.2.3) further discusses the role of mouthings in the lexicon.
It has been observed that, in spontaneous production, LIS signers tend to produce more mouthings than mouth gestures. The use of mouthings along with signing does not appear systematic since it varies from signer to signer and is influenced by various social variables, such as the extra-linguistic context, the interlocutor(s), the signer's educational background.
As for the linguistic functions, mouthing usually co-occurs more with nouns and adjectives and less frequently with verbs. It should be noted that functional elements of Italian such as plural morphemes and tense morphemes are not reproduced in the mouthings co-occurring with LIS signs. As default, those associated with nouns reproduce the masculine singular form and those associated with verbs reproduce the infinitive or past participle form.
The semantic relationship between mouthing and sign can be of different types. First, the mouthing and the manual sign can be semantically equivalent. For example, the sign man (Ita.uomo) is accompanied by the mouthing ‘uomo’.
'uomo’
man
Second, the mouthing can complete the meaning conveyed by the manual sign so that the two components combine with each other and create a complex syntagmatic unit. For example, the sign go accompanied by the mouthing casa ‘house’ means to go home.
‘casa’
go
‘(To) go home’
Third, the mouthing can add a more specific meaning to the manual sign (hyponymy). For example, the mouthing abete ‘fir’ can be combined with the sign tree to specify which kind of tree is intended.
‘abete’
tree
‘fir’
Fourth, the mouthing can disambiguate manually homonymous forms. For example, there is a sign in LIS articulated with both hands with V handshape that can be used to refer to both vegetables and pasta. In this case, the mouthing specifies which of the two meanings is intended (verdura ‘vegetable’ or pasta ‘pasta’).
‘verdura’
a. vegetable/pasta
‘vegetable’
‘pasta’
b. vegetable/pasta
‘pasta’
Fifth, the mouthing can explicitly define what a classifier sign refers to. For example, the classifier CL(flat open L): ‘round_small_object’ can be accompanied by the mouthing proiettile ‘bullet’ to specify which referent is intended.
‘proiettile’
CL(flat open L): ‘round_small_object’
‘bullet’
Sixth, the mouthing can explicitly indicate what an initialized sign (a sign whose handshape represents the first letter of the corresponding Italian word) refers to. For example, to refer to the Italian politician Bersani, signers can use the handshape corresponding to letter B and the full mouthing reproducing the name.
‘bersani’
bersani
This is a case of single-letter sign (LEXICON 2.2.2).
In spontaneous signing, if mouthing co-occurs with a manual sign, these two components tend to be isochronous, i.e. have the same duration. For this reason, sometimes mouthing undergoes alterations such as lengthening and truncation to match the timing of the manual sign. For example, the mouthing associated with the sign wash (lavo) may be realised with the lengthening of the first vowel.