Abstract The present study investigates the types of verb and symbolic representational strategies used by 10 deaf signing adults and 13 deaf signing children who described in Italian Sign Language 45 video clips representing nine action types generally communicated by five general verbs in spoken Italian. General verbs, in which the same sign was produced to refer to several different physical action types, were rarely used by either group of participants. Both signing children and adults usually produced specific depicting predicates by incorporating, through a representational strategy, the object and/or the modality of the action into the sign. As for the different types of representational strategies, the adults used the hand-as-object strategy more frequently than the children, who, in turn, preferred to use the hand-as-hand strategy, suggesting that different degrees of cognitive complexity are involved in these two symbolic strategies. Addressing the symbolic iconic strategies underlying sign formation could provide new insight into the perceptual and cognitive processes of linguistic meaning construction. The findings reported here support two main assumptions of cognitive linguistics applied to sign languages: there is a strong continuity between gestures and language; lexical units and depicting constructions derive from the same iconic core mechanism of sign creation.

中文翻译：

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意大利语手语（LIS）中的动作表示

摘要本研究调查了10个聋人成年人和13个聋人儿童所使用的动词和符号表示策略的类型，这些成人和儿童在意大利语手语中描述了45个视频片段，这些视频片段代表了通常由五个普通动词在意大利语中传达的9种动作类型。通用动词中产生相同符号以表示几种不同的身体动作类型的，很少被两组参与者使用。签名的儿童和成年人通常都会通过代表性策略将行为的对象和/或形式并入符号中，从而产生特定的描述谓词。至于不同类型的表征策略，成年人比儿童更频繁地使用“按对象”策略，而儿童则倾向于使用“按手”策略，这表明这两种象征策略涉及不同程度的认知复杂性。解决标志形成背后的象征性图标策略可以为语言意义建构的感知和认知过程提供新的见解。此处报道的发现支持应用于手语的认知语言学的两个主要假设：手势和语言之间有很强的连续性；词汇单元和描绘结构源自标志创建的相同标志性核心机制。此处报道的发现支持应用于手语的认知语言学的两个主要假设：手势和语言之间有很强的连续性；词汇单元和描绘结构源自标志创建的相同标志性核心机制。此处报道的发现支持应用于手语的认知语言学的两个主要假设：手势和语言之间有很强的连续性；词汇单元和描绘结构源自标志创建的相同标志性核心机制。