Francoprovençal: a spatial analysis of ‘partitive articles’ and potential correlates in Swiss and Italian varieties (original) (raw)
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Studia Linguistica, 2021
This contribution focuses on indefinite arguments in object position. We address this topic from the point of view of the crosslinguistic variation within the Romance continuum, especially looking at Northern Italian Dialects (NIDs). The target is to describe the distribution of the different possible realizations of this kind of arguments in this area by means of an in-depth analysis of the data coming from the ASIt database and from three new fieldwork sessions. We show that the microvariation attested in this area reflects and refines the "macro" variation attested among the major Romance languages. The finegrained picture that can be drawn from a closer look to a set of minimally varying languages helps crosslinguistic comparison and, consequently, the modeling of more precise analyses.
Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 2022
Some Romance languages, like Spanish, encode narrow scope indefinite objects without any over determiner (Bare Nouns; como pan ‘I eat bread’), while others, like French, require the insertion of an overt prenominal marker, labeled Partitive Article (PA; je mange du pain ‘I eat bread’). This asymmetry has been related to overt number marking on the noun (Delfitto & Schroter, Stark 2016 a.o.), leading to the hypothesis that number morphs on N license indefinite arguments and that PAs appear in those languages in which they are absent. Languages as Italian, in which narrow scope indefinites can be introduced both by BNs and PAs, challenge this hypothesis. By enlarging the view to Northern Italian Dialects, we update the correlation with number marking (the relevant factor being the absence of number morphs on masculine Ns) and show that Italian-like languages are not problematic, once we develop an analysis of the alternation between PAs and BNs in these languages in terms of two kinds...
Specificity in Piedmontese partitive determiners: a contact perspective
2024
The Gallo-Italic varieties of Piedmont (Northwestern Italy) all possess the so-called “partitive ar-ticle”. This is used both for singular mass nouns and as the plural form of the indefinite article, like in Italian or French. In peripheral varieties of Piedmontese, partitives are present in an articled form, displaying different degrees of optionality (see Bonato 2004, Miola 2017, and Cerruti/Regis 2020): (1) A j’ è (di) robe c’ a SBJ.3SG LOC be-PRS.3SG INDF.DET-ART.DEF.F.PL things which SBJ.3SG venta nen fé have to-PRS.3SG not do-INF “There are (some) things which one doesn’t have to do”. (Biellese; Flecchia 2023) On the contrary, the urban koine centred in Turin shows an unarticled partitive determiner, ‘d/ëd/dë, which is invariable both for gender and for number. As stated by Squartini (2022: 83), both countable nouns and mass nouns end up having the same morphosyntactic structure, bare Determiner + invariable Noun. In fact, the unarticled partitive determiner found in Turinese is properly transnumeral (Squartini 2023: 74). Following reference grammars, Turinese partitive articles turn out to be obligatory (see also Mi-ola 2017). However, Cerruti & Regis (2020) found an instance of omission, in a peri-Turinese vari-ety, with countable plurals when referring to non-specific indefinite entities (ex. 3). This possibility is also sketched by Bonato (2004: 185), with the note that these cases are almost sporadic. (2) A mangia mai 'd fruta cola fija SBJ.3SG eat-PRS.3SG never INDF.DET fruit.F.SG that girl “That girl never eats fruits”. (ASIt Questionnaire 2, Turin; http://asit.maldura.unipd.it) (3) [a i suŋ Ø 'tɛre mɑk a'dɑte a fe l ' ɛrba] SBJ.3PL LOC be-PRS.3PL Ø areas only suitable to grow-INF the grass “There are areas where only grass grows”. (ALEPO Q502, Moncalieri; unpublished materials; Cerruti/Regis 2020: 665) As stated by Stark & Gerards (2021:330), «little is known about the syntactic and semantic properties of such invariable DE-elements (and of fully-fledged “partitive articles”) in the differ-ent Romance varieties.» The aim of this paper is to investigate the different patterns displayed by the koine and the other Piedmontese varieties through a comparative analysis based on linguistic atlases and on an oral corpus collected (and in course of enrichment) in Piedmont. The focus of the analysis is double: on forms (articulated vs bare partitives), and on the semantics of forms, with particular attention paid to the interplay between the two aspects. For example, judging from AsIt (Atlante Sintattico d’Italia “Syntactic Atlas of Italy”) data, speakers of Chieri (near Turin) never omit the partitive article with non-specific indefinite enti-ties, although the partitive is present in the articled form. The spreading of the articled partitive in Turinese and peri-Turinese varieties will be analysed with the help of data coming from our corpus: this kind of process is clearly an example of Italianization of the dialects (see Ricca 2010 for a definition). In peripheral varieties, instead, the omission of the partitive determiner conveys the feature [- SPECIFIC], so that it can be seen as a “specificity indicator” (Stark 2002, 2007): a parallel situa-tion to that of Standard Italian. This is probably not due to contact, although the Italian model can act as a reinforcement for this strategy (contact-induced stability, Kühl & Braunmüller 2014). In this respect, Turinese behaves similarly to French: (4) Je vais rammasser des (*Ø) fraises SBJ.1SG go-PRS.1SG pick-INF INDF.DET-ART.DET.F.PL strawberry.F.PL “I go pick strawberries”. (French, private materials) In addition to all this, the translation questionnaires of the ASIt also unveil another strategy for expressing the feature [ - SPECIFIC], namely, the determinative article: (5) It cati mai ij pom SBJ.2SG buy-PRS.2SG never ART.DET.M.PL apple.M.PL “You never buy apples”. (ASIt Questionnaire 2, Turin; http://asit.maldura.unipd.it) In this case, we see how a formally definite NP is functionally indefinite: the speaker doesn’t re-fer to some specific apples but, more generally, aims to indicate them as a whole category. In this sense, our proposal also aims to analyze the subtle border between the categories of Speci-ficity and Genericity, along with the potential overlaps between them.
Partitives and Indefinites: Phenomena in Italian Varieties
Studia Linguistica, 2021
This contribution examines the relation between genitives/ partitives and indefinites in some Italian varieties. A central question concerns the nature of the preposition de/di (DE) 'of' (< Latin de), specifically investigated in contexts where it does not introduce the usual possessive or partitive reading: bare partitives/Partitive articles of Italian varieties, negative contexts in which a negative marker select a partitive occurrence of DE of the type mia+DE in Northern Italian dialects and the linker-like element in Southern Italian dialects. We propose that these structures rely on the lexical content of DE, corresponding to the elementary relation part-whole and that their particular behaviour can be treated in the terms of pair-merge in the sense of Chomsky (2020). The indefinites in varieties devoid of the partitive article will be treated in the final section.
Indefinite determiners in two northern Italian dialects
Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 2022
Italian and Italian dialects express indefiniteness in different ways, among which with a null determiner (ZERO) like all other Romance languages, but also with the definite article (ART) unlike what is found in Romance. Italian and some northern Italian dialects also display the so-called “partitive determiner” DI+ART, which is present in French. Few northwestern Italian dialects display (bare) DI, parallel to French. We adopt Cardinaletti and Giusti’s (2015, 2016) unified analysis and build on Cardinaletti and Giusti’s (2018, 2020) hypothesis that the variation and optionality in the distribution of the four determiners in regional Italian mirror their distribution in Italian dialects along two isoglosses: the ART isogloss spreading from the center of Italy towards north-west and south-east; and the DI isogloss spreading from Piedmont eastwards. We conduct a quantitative analysis on the results of a questionnaire in Piacentino and Rodigino. We test the distribution of the four det...
This paper addresses the use of partitive determiners in Piedmontese as a case in point for the interplay of language variation and change in Italo-Romance. Firstly, a brief diachronic account will be provided of the development of partitive determiners in Piedmontese, ranging from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; such an overview will rely upon the results of recent studies on this subject. Next, the behavior of partitive determiners in contemporary Piedmontese will be examined; we will draw primarily on some unpublished materials collected within the ALEPO research program (ALEPO stands for Atlante linguistico ed etnografico del Piemonte Occidentale, "Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Western Piedmont"), which consist of both responses to a questionnaire survey and spontaneous speech data. The study will help to shed light on the similarities and differences not only between different varieties of Piedmontese, but also between such varieties and Italian. The main paradigmatic differences identified will be argued to relate to two different ways of categorizing the relationship between mass nouns and countable plurals, one in which quantification prevails over classification, and the other in which classification is foregrounded. This state of affairs will then be discussed against the backdrop of the sociolinguistic situation under scrutiny, paying special attention to the contact between Piedmontese and Italian (as well as with French up to the end of the nineteenth century) and to the 'superposition' of both an official standard language (i.e. Italian) and a regional koine (based on the variety of Turin) over local varieties of Piedmontese.
Géolinguistique Journal, 2022
In Romance languages the indefinite articles are generally the result of prepositions + determiners (P + D) contraction, DE + definite Article, combined with nominals within indefinite Determiners Phrases (DPs). However, some Romance languages show bare articles or bare nouns vs. explicit articles. Thus, Romance languages show asymmetry and competition between cover determiners and bare nouns. All Gallo–Romance varieties have undergone a grammaticalization process, which turns a prepositional phrase (de–P PP) into a Determiner Phrase (de–D DP). In this article we focus on the expression of indefiniteness in Francoprovençal (a Gallo–Romance language), sketching the existence of a sub–grammar for its indefinite markers. The Francoprovençal indefinite articles do not seem to have undergone the fusion of the article and the preposition (as in French du ‘some’), but its indefiniteness appears to come from the preposition alone de. A consonantal liaison contributes to the morphosyntactic indefiniteness inside the Francoprovençal DP. Yet, the preposition de ‘of’ without articles, is categorized as D°, a functional marker of indefiniteness. Crucially, the latent liaison consonant is not the result of a contraction of P + Article, but it is issued from two contracted Latin prepositions (P + P). Keywords : Indefiniteness, Francoprovençal, Bare Articles, Liaison, Syntax–Phonology interface.
2021
In this paper, we focus on two constructions that allow preverbal subjects headed by a so-called partitive article in French, that is, sentences with a stage-level predicate and generic emphatic constructions. The aim is to explain why their counterparts were generally not accepted by speakers of Francoprovençal, an endangered and understudied Gallo-Romance language, in a translation task carried out in fieldwork in the Aosta Valley in Italy (Ihsane 2018, Stark & Gerards 2020). To account for our results, we propose that preverbal subjects in the two languages have different statuses and develop the typology of languages postulated by Dobrovie-Sorin & Laca (2003): we argue that there are more than two types of languages when it comes to the status of preverbal subjects and that Francoprovençal differs not only from French (Ihsane 2018), but also from languages like Spanish: it generally has topical subjects like Spanish but also allows some subjects that represent new information to occur preverbally. In contrast to French, however, this option is restricted to nominals that reach a certain degree of referential givenness (Gundel 2003).
Conference presented at OCP 2015 London: 2018 Old World Conference on Phonology, 12–14 January 2018, London, United Kingdom. , 2018
It is well known that Italian determiners seem to be governed by allomorphic rules. For instance, the definite masculine surfaces as: [il] before onsets [il+tavolo] 'the table', [l] before vowels [l+albero] 'the tree', and [lo] before s+C sequences, certain consonant clusters and inherent geminates: [lo+stampo] 'the stamp', [lo+psikɔlogo] 'the psychologist', [lo+ts:ijo] 'the uncle propose that this is not strictly speaking allomorphy because all Italian determiners share a common underlying form that varies in shape according to phonological conditions. Crucially, the underlying form is composed of two CV units ("bisyllabic"): C1V1C2V2. Definiteness is marked by a floating vowel under V1 and a floating /l/ sits under C2, while V2 expones phi-features.