Caterina Mauri | Università di Bologna (original) (raw)

Books by Caterina Mauri

Arcodia, G. F & Mauri, C. 2016. La diversità linguistica. Roma: Carocci. http://www.carocci.it/index.php?option=com\_carocci&task=schedalibro&isbn=9788843081998&Itemid=72, 2016

Le lingue del mondo sono oltre 7.000, anche se non tutte godono di ottima salute. Le loro proprie... more Le lingue del mondo sono oltre 7.000, anche se non tutte godono di ottima salute. Le loro proprietà strutturali mostrano una variazione non casuale ed è possibile individuare alcuni comportamenti ricorrenti, se non addirittura “universali”. Tuttavia, il modo in cui le lingue possono variare resta il dato che, più ancora delle somiglianze osservate, stimola nuovi interrogativi di ricerca. Lo scopo del volume è aprire una finestra su tale diversità linguistica, mostrando quanto e come ciò che siamo soliti osservare da una prospettiva “eurocentrica” possa improvvisamente apparire raro e strano, se confrontato con lingue distanti genealogicamente e geograficamente.

Mauri, Caterina & Fiorentini, Ilaria & Goria, Eugenio (eds.). 2021. Building Categories in Interaction. Linguistic resources at work. John Benjamins., 2021

This book addresses the topic of linguistic categorization from a novel perspective. While most o... more This book addresses the topic of linguistic categorization from a novel perspective. While most of the early research has focused on how linguistic systems reflect some pre-existing ways of categorizing experience, the contributions included in this volume seek to understand how linguistic resources of various nature (prosodic cues, affixes, constructions, discourse markers, …) can be ‘put to work’ in order to actively build categories in discourse and in interaction, to achieve social goals. This question is addressed in different ways by researchers from different subfields of linguistics, including psycholinguistics, conversation analysis, linguistic typology and discourse pragmatics, and a major point of innovation is represented in fact by the interdisciplinary nature of the volume and in the systematic search for converging evidence.

From Speaking to Grammar, 2022

Speech represents the native usage of language and the speech mode shapes the entire communicativ... more Speech represents the native usage of language
and the speech mode shapes the entire
communicative life of individuals and
communities. Based on these premises, this
book aims to place spontaneous spoken texts
at the center of linguistic analysis to have a
more realistic and accurate idea of what a
language is as a whole.
The essays collected in this book are based on
rigorous qualitative and quantitative analysis
of different corpus-based and corpus-driven
data with diachronic, typological, sociolinguistic,
psycholinguistic, educational objectives and
integrate different points of views to understand
whether and to what extent speech features
affect the grammaticality of languages.
A complex framework emerges, which puts
forward new theoretical perspectives in many
areas of linguistics.

This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical Studies in Language.

This book examines the coding of the three coordination relations of combination, contrast and al... more This book examines the coding of the three coordination relations of combination, contrast and alternative between states of affairs on the basis of a 74 language sample, with special focus on the languages spoken in Europe. It constitutes the first systematic inquiry so far conducted on the cross-linguistic coding of coordination, as defined in cognitive and pragmatic terms. This research shows that the 'and-but-or' coding system which is typical of Central-Western Europe appears to be extremely rare outside Europe, where a great variation in the coding of coordination is attested. This cross-linguistic variation, however, is not random, but is crucially constrained by the interaction of economic principles with the semantic properties of the individual relations expressed. A fine-grained functional systematization of coordination is proposed and described by means of implicational patterns and semantic maps. This work brings together a broad cross-linguistic perspective and a detailed semantic analysis, largely based on new and comparable data collected by means of questionnaires, all accessible in the appendix of the book. It represents the first systematic attempt towards a unified typology of coordination relations.

Papers by Caterina Mauri

Linguistic Typology, Feb 15, 2021

This paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call 'heterogeneous plurals', an overarching... more This paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call 'heterogeneous plurals', an overarching term comprising associative plurals (expressions meaning X [person] & company) and similative plurals (expressions meaning X and similar entities). Based on a 110-language sample, we identify the most recurrent sources of these two types of plurals by means of various types of evidence (homophony/identity, internal reconstruction, comparison with cognate languages). The two types of plurals develop out of different source types: while the sources of associative plurals include elements that work as set constructors (plural anaphoric elements, plural possessives, names meaning 'group'), those of similative plurals comprise elements with vague reference such as interrogative/indefinite items or uncertainty markers. There are also a few source types that may develop into both associative and similative plurals, such as connectives ('and/with') and universal quantifiers ('every/all'). The differences in the diachronic pathways leading to the two types of plurals are explained in terms of the different referential properties of the nominal bases from which they are formed (proper names/kin terms vs. common nouns), but also taking into This article is the result of joint work. Caterina Mauri is responsible for Sections 1, 2, 4.2, and 5, while Andrea Sansò is responsible for Sections 3, 4.1, and 6. We wish to thank Michael Daniel, an anonymous referee and the editorial board of Linguistic Typology for useful comments on an earlier draft of the article. This research was developed within the SIR project 'LEAdhoC-Linguistic expression of ad hoc categories' (prot. n. RBSI14IIG0), funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research and coordinated by Caterina Mauri. The usual disclaimers apply.

allegatifac.unipv.it

There are at least two ways in which the terms realis and irrealis are used in grammatical theory... more There are at least two ways in which the terms realis and irrealis are used in grammatical theory. In a major strand of the literature on modality, mainly embodied in the works of Talmy Givón, the term 'irrealis' is used to refer to a 'mega-modality'subsuming a number of more ...

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

This paper provides the first cross-linguistic study on non-exhaustive connectives. After definin... more This paper provides the first cross-linguistic study on non-exhaustive connectives. After defining non-exhaustivity and briefly exploring the range of linguistic strategies encoding it across languages, the methodology underlying the study will be discussed. Based on the analysis of 35 languages, for which at least one non-exhaustive connective was found, it will be argued that non-exhaustive connectives exhibit quite homogenous distributional properties and derive from a restricted set of recurrent diachronic sources. Speakers are indeed likely to mobilize i) elements already encoding or implying non-exhaustivity, ii) elements expressing an epistemic condition of uncertainty, or iii) elements expressing exemplification.

$Research paper thumbnail of I connettivi congiuntivi e avversativi dall\u2019antico russo di Novgorod al russo moderno$

Nel presente lavoro intendiamo approfondire lo sviluppo diacronico dei connettivi russi, portando... more Nel presente lavoro intendiamo approfondire lo sviluppo diacronico dei connettivi russi, portando avanti un\u2019analisi comparativa dei connettivi congiuntivi e avversativi attestati nei testi su corteccia di betulla dell\u2019antica Novgorod (secoli XI-XV) e dei connettivi congiuntivi e avversativi usati in russo moderno

Franco Angeli eBooks, 2007

Obiettivo di questo articolo \ue8 analizzare il ruolo dei database elettronici nella ricerca tipo... more Obiettivo di questo articolo \ue8 analizzare il ruolo dei database elettronici nella ricerca tipologica, combinando riflessioni di natura teorica pi\uf9 generale con l\u2019esperienza specifica del Pavia Typological Database, un database che raccoglie e rende accessibili dati relativi ad alcuni fenomeni morfosintattici delle lingue d\u2019Europa

The Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2018

The aim of this paper is to analyze list constructions as linguistic tools to build categories in... more The aim of this paper is to analyze list constructions as linguistic tools to build categories in discourse, identifying the inferential processes leading from list constructions to categorization and examining the semantic and morphosyntactic elements that activate abstractive reasoning within lists. Based on real occurrences of lists in written and spoken Italian, we will first of all propose a crucial distinction between exhaustive and non-exhaustive lists, arguing that (non-)exhaustivity determines the layer at which the construction of a category occurs, namely the layer of presupposition or the 'what-is-said' part of the utterance. We will then focus on non-exhaustive lists, arguing that they directly communicate a bottom-up, exemplar-driven abstraction, characterized by the presence of an inherently indexical reference (i.e. reference to further Xs characterized by some underlying Property P), which will lead us to call it 'indexical categorization'. The linguistic analysis of how indexical categorization is expressed in discourse will show a major distinction between (i) elements characterized by an indexical semantics, which trigger the abstraction process, and (ii) elements providing semantic clues towards the correct construction of the indexical category. We will conclude by taking a broader perspective and by explaining the patterns observed for indexical categorization in the light of the wider process of online reference construction.

In questo contributo si presenta un nuovo corpus per lo studio dell\u2019italiano parlato: il KIP... more In questo contributo si presenta un nuovo corpus per lo studio dell\u2019italiano parlato: il KIParla. In particolare, si discutono nel dettaglio le scelte metodologiche che sono state compiute al fine di creare una risorsa che fosse facilmente accessibile e che garantisse la consultazione attraverso un ampio corredo di metadati, relativi sia alla situazione sia ai parlanti. La struttura dell\u2019articolo segue le fasi temporali che hanno portato alla costruzione della risorsa: dopo una breve introduzione (1), si presenta il corpus design (2), si discutono le metodologie seguite per la raccolta, la trascrizione e la pubblicazione dei dati (3) e, infine, si d\u2000 conto della struttura modulare della risorsa (4)

In italiano, altro mostra una dimensione di ambiguità poco esplorata, secondo cui si distingue un... more In italiano, altro mostra una dimensione di ambiguità poco esplorata, secondo cui si distingue un’interpretazione come ‘diverso’ da un’interpretazione come ‘ulteriore’. Il contributo si occupa di individuare gli elementi del significato che danno origine a questa ambiguità e le condizioni contestuali che conducono alla disambiguazione. La questione è affrontata per mezzo di un confronto tra la situazione del latino arcaico e classico e la situazione che per l’italiano emerge dall’analisi di dati del parlato. L’analisi evidenzia la presenza di un nucleo di tratti comuni a latino e italiano, che corrobora la pervasività della dimensione di ambiguità oggetto di studio e pone le basi per un’indagine diacronica. I dati del parlato permettono, inoltre, di studiare nel dettaglio i meccanismi inferenziali che mettono gli interlocutori in grado di gestire l’ambiguità e di risolverla nel contesto. In Italian, altro ‘other’ shows a dimension of ambiguity that has been little explored, according to which the reading ‘different’ is distinguished from the reading ‘further’. This contribution singles out the meaning elements that produce this ambiguity and the contextual conditions that lead to disambiguation. The issue is approached by means of a comparison between the situation in Archaic and Classical Latin and the situation that emerges from data of spoken Italian. The analysis highlights the presence of a core of features shared by Latin and Italian, which corroborates the pervasive character of the investigated ambiguity and lays the groundwork for a diachronic investigation. Furthermore, the data from spoken Italian enable a detailed study of the inferential mechanisms that allow the speakers to manage ambiguity and resolve it in context.

L\u2019obiettivo di questo articolo \ue8 indagare la nascita e lo sviluppo di due connettivi cond... more L\u2019obiettivo di questo articolo \ue8 indagare la nascita e lo sviluppo di due connettivi condizionali complessi dell\u2019italiano (secondo la definizione di Visconti 2000: 70), sempre che e caso mai, utilizzando come base di dati un ampio corpus diacronico dell\u2019italiano dalle origini a oggi. Sempre che come connettivo condizionale nasce dal connettivo temporale sempre che dell\u2019italiano antico, equivalente a \u2018tutte le volte che\u2019/\u2018in ogni occasione in cui\u2019. La componente semantica responsabile dello sviluppo del significato condizionale \ue8 la genericit\ue0 delle situazioni che sono messe in relazione nella costruzione temporale con sempre che. Caso mai nasce, attraverso l\u2019ellissi del complementatore, dalla costruzione caso (mai) che; quest\u2019ultima costruzione, attestata in un periodo che va dal XVI al XIX secolo, subisce un rapido declino parallelo alla nascita e alla diffusione di caso mai

La costruzione di categorie \ue8 il processo cognitivo, ancora prima che comunicativo, che permet... more La costruzione di categorie \ue8 il processo cognitivo, ancora prima che comunicativo, che permette ai parlanti di organizzare la realt\ue0, e una realt\ue0 che \ue8 stata in qualche modo organizzata pu\uf2 diventare anche una realt\ue0 comunicabile. Tuttavia, l\u2019organizzazione in categorie e la comunicazione di tale organizzazione non necessariamente corrispondono a fasi distinte e successive, poich\ue9 la verbalizzazione pu\uf2 essere essa stessa strumento di categorizzazione. Questo si osserva in particolar modo negli scambi conversazionali, dove si assiste frequentemente alla costruzione estemporanea, on-line, di categorie funzionali a scopi specifici, che non sedimentano nella memoria a lungo termine, ma vengono dismesse una volta svolta la loro funzione. Questo tipo di categorie, come per esempio [OGGETTI UTILI IN UNA VACANZA AL MARE] viene tipicamente veicolato mediante costruzioni linguistiche complesse e tramite il ricorso ad esempi, poich\ue9 tipicamente non esiste un\u2019etichetta linguistica stabile e \u2018pronta all\u2019uso\u2019 come per le cosiddette categorie comuni (ad es. [UCCELLI], [MOBILI], ecc.) (Barsalou, 2010). Lo scopo di questo articolo \ue8 fornire una panoramica delle strategie linguistiche che possono veicolare la costruzione on-line di categorie, per comprendere pi\uf9 a fondo il rapporto tra i processi di categorizzazione e i contesti discorsivi nei quali questi vengono elaborati e comunicati. Forniremo innanzitutto una descrizione semantica dettagliata di cosa si intende per categorizzazione on-line, soffermandoci in particolare sui processi astrattivi guidati da esempi, sulla loro dipendenza dal contesto (sezione 2.1) e sul rapporto tra categorizzazione estemporanea e vaghezza (sezione 2.2). Una volta individuato il tertium comparationis in modo univoco, procederemo alla descrizione delle strategie linguistiche che possono svolgere la funzione in esame, osservando la variazione attestata sia sul piano morfosintattico che semantico (sezione 3). Nella sezione 4 discuteremo infine le tendenze osservate e porremo le basi per ulteriori sviluppi del lavoro

Da Milano, F., Mauri, C., & Sansò, A. (2009). La variazione linguistica in Europa attrave... more Da Milano, F., Mauri, C., & Sansò, A. (2009). La variazione linguistica in Europa attraverso un database tipologico. L'esperienza del Pavia Typological Database. In Linguistica e modelli tecnologici di ricerca. Atti del XL congresso internazionale di studi della società di linguistica italiana ( ...

In this paper we introduce the main features of the KIParla corpus, a new resource for the study ... more In this paper we introduce the main features of the KIParla corpus, a new resource for the study of spoken Italian. In addition to its other capabilities, KIParla provides access to a wide range of metadata that characterize both the participants and the settings in which the interactions take place. Furthermore, it is designed to be shared as a free resource tool through the NoSketch Engine interface and to be expanded as a monitor corpus (Sinclair 1991). 1 KIParla corpus: an introduction The aim of this paper is to describe the design and implementation of a new resource tool for the study of spoken Italian. The KIParla corpus is the result of a joint collaboration between the Universities of Bologna and Turin and is open to further partnerships in the future. It is characterized by a number of innovative features. In addition to providing access to a wide range of metadata concerning the speakers and the setting in which the interactions take place, it offers transcriptions time-...

Linguistic Typology, 2021

This paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call ‘heterogeneous plurals’, an overarching... more This paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call ‘heterogeneous plurals’, an overarching term comprising associative plurals (expressions meaning X[person] & company) and similative plurals (expressions meaning X and similar entities). Based on a 110-language sample, we identify the most recurrent sources of these two types of plurals by means of various types of evidence (homophony/identity, internal reconstruction, comparison with cognate languages). The two types of plurals develop out of different source types: while the sources of associative plurals include elements that work as set constructors (plural anaphoric elements, plural possessives, names meaning ‘group’), those of similative plurals comprise elements with vague reference such as interrogative/indefinite items or uncertainty markers. There are also a few source types that may develop into both associative and similative plurals, such as connectives (‘and/with’) and universal quantifiers (‘every/all’). The di...

Arcodia, G. F & Mauri, C. 2016. La diversità linguistica. Roma: Carocci. http://www.carocci.it/index.php?option=com\_carocci&task=schedalibro&isbn=9788843081998&Itemid=72, 2016

Mauri, Caterina & Fiorentini, Ilaria & Goria, Eugenio (eds.). 2021. Building Categories in Interaction. Linguistic resources at work. John Benjamins., 2021

From Speaking to Grammar, 2022

This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical Studies in Language.

Linguistic Typology, Feb 15, 2021

allegatifac.unipv.it

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

$Research paper thumbnail of I connettivi congiuntivi e avversativi dall\u2019antico russo di Novgorod al russo moderno$

Franco Angeli eBooks, 2007

The Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2018

Linguistic Typology, 2021

Folia Linguistica, 2018

Ad hoc categorization is the bottom-up abstraction of a category starting from concrete exemplars... more Ad hoc categorization is the bottom-up abstraction of a category starting from concrete exemplars of the category itself. When we observe linguistic data, we find various phenomena that provide evidence for the ubiquity of such an on-line, goal-driven and context-dependent categorization in everyday communication. Beyond offering concept labels in the form of words, language indeed provides speakers with a great number of strategies to convey reference to a class by naming representative individuals. After providing a semantic and pragmatic account of ad hoc categorization in terms of indexicality, we will survey ad hoc categorization strategies in discourse and across languages: they can be syntactic (lists, general extenders, exemplifying constructions), morphological (heterogeneous plurals, collectives, aggregates, compounds), or in-between (reduplication). We will argue that all these strategies show a similar abstract structure consisting in a categorization trigger, that is, s...

STUF - Language Typology and Universals, 2019

A morphosyntactic peculiarity that separates proper names from (most) other noun types is their a... more A morphosyntactic peculiarity that separates proper names from (most) other noun types is their ability to occur in a special type of plural, called associative plural, whose meaning is X and X’s associated person(s). In this paper, we apply a ‘converging evidence’ methodology to the analysis of associative plurals, by providing a diachronic typology of these plurals through the identification of the more frequent sources of associative plural markers that are attested in a sample of 80 languages, and by looking for emerging constructions for the expression of associative plurality in two corpora of English and Italian, two languages that do not have a grammaticalized way to encode this type of plurality. The analysis will show that associative plurals are likely to grammaticalize from a restricted pool of synchronic sources, and that these sources are mostly indexical sources and sources denoting the plural set, in accordance with the special semantics and referential properties of...

Cuadernos de Filología Italiana, 2015

Lo scopo di questo lavoro è duplice, poiché mira a fornire un quadro sincronico e diacronico dell... more Lo scopo di questo lavoro è duplice, poiché mira a fornire un quadro sincronico e diacronico delle funzioni con le quali piuttosto che è utilizzato nell'italiano contemporaneo e a ricostruire il percorso diacronico che ha condotto allo sviluppo di tali funzioni. Accanto al valore originale, in cui il connettivo introduce un'alternativa scartata (a favore di un'altra preferita), piuttosto che viene frequentemente usato anche i) per collegare tra loro alternative equivalenti, tipicamente non esaustive, e ii) in posizione finale di frase, per suggerire la presenza di ulteriori alternative potenziali non menzionate (somigliando ad eccetera). Questi due usi di piuttosto che sono accomunati da una funzione esemplificativa, tramite cui le alternative esplicite sono presentate come membri possibili e rappresentativi di una categoria più astratta. Sia l'analisi sincronica che quella diacronica si basano su un corpus di dati appositamente costruito che include occorrenze di parlato e di scritto del web, in grado di rivelare anche quelle funzioni più colloquiali e discorsive che non sono ancora attestate nello scritto. Accanto all'analisi diacronica, verrà proposto uno sguardo comparativo, volto a mostrare come lo sviluppo diacronico seguito da piuttosto che trovi dei paralleli in altre lingue.

'COME' and 'GO' off the Beaten Grammaticalization Path, 2014

The aim of this paper is to address the complex net of factors at play in the development of dire... more The aim of this paper is to address the complex net of factors at play in the development of directive values out of deictic motion verbs. To do this, we will first discuss data from a number of unrelated languages showing how motion verbs may acquire a general (non-motion) directive function, and secondly we will complete the picture by comparing these paths with other diachronic scenarios involving motion verbs as sources of grammatical meanings. The paper is based on a convenience sample of 200 languages

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011

This article discusses issues relevant to the grammaticalisation of coordinating interclausal con... more This article discusses issues relevant to the grammaticalisation of coordinating interclausal connectives. The markers included in this analysis as coordinating connectives are identified on the basis of their function, rather than on the basis of their morphosyntactic and distributional properties. It discusses the notion of interclausal connective and explains that two clauses can be linked in a number of different semantic relations either by being simply juxtaposed or by means of explicit linking devices and this distinction is commonly referred to as the opposition between asyndetic and syndetic constructions.

Linguistic Typology, 2023

This paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call ‘heterogeneous plurals’, an overarching... more This paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call ‘heterogeneous plurals’, an overarching term comprising associative plurals (expressions meaning X[person] & company) and similative plurals (expressions meaning X and similar entities). Based on a 110-language sample, we identify the most recurrent sources of these two types of plurals by means of various types of evidence (homoph-ony/identity, internal reconstruction, comparison with cognate languages). The two types of plurals develop out of different source types: while the sources of associative plurals include elements that work as set constructors (plural anaphoric elements, plural possessives, names meaning ‘group’), those of similative plurals comprise elements with vague reference such as interrogative/indefinite items or uncertainty markers. There are also a few source types that may develop into both associative and similative plurals, such as connectives (‘and/with’) and universal quantifiers (‘every/all’). The differences in the diachronic pathways leading to the two types of plurals are explained in terms of the different referential properties of the nominal bases from which they are formed (proper names/kin terms vs. common nouns), but also keeping into account the typical discourse contexts in which the two types of plurals are employed.

FOLIA LINGUISTICA HISTORICA 39 (2018), pp. 1-35

Ad hoc categorization is the bottom-up abstraction of a category starting from concrete exemplars... more Ad hoc categorization is the bottom-up abstraction of a category starting from concrete exemplars of the category itself. When we observe linguistic data, we find various phenomena that provide evidence for the ubiquity of such an on-line, goal-driven and context dependent categorization in everyday communication. Beyond offering concept labels in the form of words, language indeed provides speakers with a great number of strategies to convey reference to a class by naming representative individuals. After providing a semantic and pragmatic account of ad hoc categorization in terms of indexicality, we will survey ad hoc categorization strategies in discourse and across languages: they can be syntactic (lists, general extenders, exemplifying constructions,), morphological (heterogeneous plurals, collectives, aggregates, compounds), or in-between (reduplication). We will argue that all these strategies show a similar abstract structure consisting in a categorization trigger, that is, some prosodic, morphological or syntactic element triggering the abstractive inferential process towards the category identification, plus a linguistic expression referring to some overt category member, which is processed as the starting point for abstraction. The diachronic connections between these strategies and the pathways leading to their emergence and conventionalization also speak in favor of their unified treatment.

Lo Baido, Cristina & Mauri, Caterina. 2022. Lo Baido, Maria Cristina / Mauri, Caterina (2022): «The encoding of irrelevance in discourse: tanto between concession and justification», Cuadernos de Filología Italiana, 29, pp. Xx, 2022

The paper sets out to investigate the linguistic expression of irrelevance in discourse, by focus... more The paper sets out to investigate the linguistic expression of irrelevance in discourse, by focusing on the functions and uses of the marker tanto in present-day Italian. The marker encodes the irrelevance of a given condition, thus conveying a concessive meaning not distant from the value expressed by concessive conditionals or 'no matter' predicates. In the construction [p, tanto q], the marker tanto conveys the fact that q holds in any case, namely whether p, non-p, or any value of p is the case. After discussing how the notion of irrelevance has been treated in the literature on conditionals, concessives and predicates of indifference, we will discuss the results of a corpus-based study on spoken Italian, identifying and annotating all the occurrences of irrelevance-tanto. We will show that irrelevance may be expressed by a number of different discourse patterns, explicitly mentioning the irrelevant proposition, the null-effect and the motivation for irrelevance, or omitting one or more of these components. It will be argued that the cases in which speakers simply refer to the irrelevance of a given proposition are rare in our sample, whereas it is more frequent that they also mention the motivation underlying irrelevance, justifying their indifference and thus crucially acting at the intersubjective level. We will show, indeed, that tanto may also be used alone as a discourse marker encoding the speaker's attitude of indifference: in these cases, tanto is pronounced with suspensive intonation, and subsumes under its semantics the adversative, justificative, and indiscriminative value, activating meanings that speakers are supposed to share.

STUF - Language Typology and Universals 72 (4): 603-626, 2019

A morphosyntactic peculiarity that separates proper names from (most) other noun types is their a... more A morphosyntactic peculiarity that separates proper names from (most) other noun types is their ability to occur in a special type of plural, called
associative plural, whose meaning is X and X’s associated person(s). In this paper, we apply a ‘converging evidence’ methodology to the analysis of associative plurals, by providing a diachronic typology of these plurals through the identification of the more frequent sources of associative plural markers that are attested in a sample of 80 languages, and by looking for emerging constructions for the expression of associative plurality in two corpora of English and Italian, two languages that do not have a grammaticalized way to encode this type of plurality. The analysis will show that associative plurals are likely to grammaticalize from a restricted pool of synchronic sources, and that these sources are mostly indexical sources and sources denoting the plural set, in accordance with the special semantics and referential properties of proper names.

Paper presented at the 13th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology, Pavia, 4-6 September 2019