Comparative Correlatives in Italian Sign Language

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).