Persistence and renewal in the relative pronoun paradigm: the case of Italian (original) (raw)

PERSISTENCE AND RENEWAL IN THE RELATIVE PRONOUN PARADIGM: THE CASE OF ITALIAN 1

Folia Linguistica Historica XXXVI,2, 115-138, 2005

ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT 1. Developmental trends in the cross-linguistic coding of relative relations In his typological analysis of relative clauses (=RC), Comrie (1989: 149; 2002, 2003) notes that the relative pronoun (=RP) type is widespread in the languages of Europe but is cross-linguistically quite rare. Indeed, he points outs that examples found outside Europe nearly always turn out to have arisen under the influence of some European languages. Thus the relative-pronoun type gives "the impression of a type that arises rarely spontaneously, but which once it has arisen, is a favoured construction for borrowing" (Comrie 2003: 20). 2 A number of interesting questions arises from this suggestion: first of all one might ask whether RPs are a stable feature in the languages which use them, or show a tendency towards change, reduction or renewal giving rise to more common relative clause formation strategies, such as the anaphoric pronoun strategy and the gap strategy (Comrie 1989: 147ff., Givón 1990: 655). Both strategies, as noted by Comrie (2002), are well represented in Mediterranean and European languages, which have largely lost their case systems. Secondly, one would not expect new relative pronouns to arise easily. For this reason it is striking that Romance languages have recreated a relative pronoun of il quale type, which is marked for gender, number and syntactic role of the relativized item. The motivation for this change deserves to be investigated further. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a general picture of the developmental trends from Latin to Romance, taking Italian as an illustrative example. Section 3 illustrates different types of RC. Section 4 outlines the history of il quale and formulates the main claim of this paper, namely that il quale was originally used as a means of textual cohesion. Section 5 presents the results of a corpus study of Old Italian texts. Section 6 explores some Romance and Germanic parallels.

European relative clauses and the uniqueness of the Relative Pronoun Type

Rivista di lingüística, 2007

European resumptive-introductory relative pronouns and the correspondent type of relative clause are one of the core properties of the Standard Average European. (Indo)-European languages are typologically isolated in having developed a clause-initial case-marked pronoun that introduces a relative clause. Taking into account not only the standard, but also the non-standard, language's usages, especially considering differences between speech and writing, the paper argues in favour of a more complex view about European relative clauses. European relative pronouns come from two different evolutionary lines. Continental West Germanic languages (Dutch, German) maintain and still use an inflected (Indo-European) relative pronoun while Romance languages, Greek, and English adopt a mixed system where an inflected relative pronoun alternates with an invariant marker introducing relative clauses and it is the last form that better continues the IE form. In fact, in these same languages the 'new' relative pronoun (from *ille qualis) is a Medieval (at least XII century) innovation originated in a common written (literary) tradition, influenced by Latin language. So, the diffusion in Europe of the relative pronoun strategy reflects the 'sharing' of a common (written) cultural tradition. Its written origins explain the relative uniqueness of the relative pronoun strategy if cross-linguistically considered. *

Relative clauses in the diachrony of Italian

2021

This paper investigates relative clauses (RCs) in the diachrony of Italian aiming at shedding light on the syntactic derivation of RCs. Building on Sauerland’s (2003) claim that RCs involve two non-distinct heads, Cinque (2008, 2013) unifies all RCs under a single derivation proposing that the two heads can either be both lexical or both null elements in syntax. When the two heads are lexical expressions, the RC will be lexically-headed, whereas when the heads are null elements, the RC will be headless, and thus a free RC. According to Cinque (2013: ch. 17), languages differ as to which head or which portion of heads they spell out according to the PF requirements available in a language. In some languages the internal head is always deleted at PF, in others it is spelled out, in some others both heads are fully spelled out, whereas in others languages portions of the heads can be spelled out. In this paper we argue that this variation may not be due to PF requirements only, but it ...

European relative clauses and the uniqueness of the relative pronoun

Italian Journal of Linguistics, 2007

Diachrony and dialects : grammatical change in the dialects of Italy

2014

Within the larger class of relative clauses, we will isolate a specific subclass, first discussed in Benincà (2003; 2012a), that of relative clauses modifying a nominal predicate exemplified in (1) and (1) Gianni è un uomo che non si dà mai per vinto (It.) Gianni is a man that not self= gives never for won 'Gianni is a man that never surrenders'

On relative complementizers and relative pronouns: rethinking grammaticalization

Functional Heads across time: syntactic reanalysis and change., 2022

This paper explores the syntactic status of che and (il) qual(e) relativizers, i.e. what are standardly referred to as relative complementizers and relative pronouns, in Old and Modern Italian and Italian varieties and proposes a unified analysis for both types of items. It takes into account the ongoing debate regarding the categorial status of relativizers (

A Corpus-Based Study of Relative Pronouns in Spanish Essays between the 17th and 19th centuries

This paper is a quantitative and qualitative study of the relative pronouns que (that), el cual (which), quien (who), and el que (the one that) in a corpus of ± 35,000 words of Spanish essays written between the 17 th and 19 th century. The study analyzes these relatives in four linguistic environments: 1) restrictive vs. nonrestrictive relative clauses, 2) animacy of the antecedent, 3) presence vs. absence of a preposition, and 4) grammatical function of the relative pronoun in its clause. The data support Arias Alvarez' (1994) claim that modern Spanish, unlike 16 th century Spanish, permits quien with an overt antecedent in contexts without prepositions. The study shows that quien has changed with regard to the animacy; whereas quien in the 16 th century is found with inanimate antecedents, this does not seem to occur in modern Spanish. Furthermore, there has been a change in frequency of especially que and quien [+animate] regarding the grammatical function each fulfills in its clause. Arias Alvarez' claim that que has remained stable is therefore not supported.

From Latin to Romance: case loss and preservation in pronominal systems

Probus, 2014

The evolution from Latin into Romance is marked by the loss of case in nominal declensions. In most Romance varieties, however, pronouns, specifically in the 1st/2nd person singular, keep case differentiations. In some varieties 1st/2nd singular pronouns present a three-way case split, essentially the same reconstructed for proto-Romance (De Dardel and Gaeng 1992, Zamboni 1998). We document and analyze the current situation of Romance in the first part of the article (section 1). In the second part of the article we argue that the Dative Shifted distribution of loro in modern Italian, accounted for by means of the category of weak pronoun in Cardinaletti and Starke (1999), is best construed as a survival of oblique case in the 3rd person system (section 2). This casts doubts on the weak pronoun category, as applied to Old Italian as well (Egerland and Cardinaletti 2010).

On the grammaticalization of kwi-/kwo- relative clauses in Proto-Indo-European

Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages, V. Bubenik - J. Hewson - S. Rose (eds.), 2009

There is no general agreement as to whether relative clauses can be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European and, in case they can, as to what pronoun was used for introducing them. It is thus interesting to review the evidence available for the reconstruction of the process of grammaticalization of *kwi-/kwo- relative clauses. Attention is brought to the synchronic and diachronic typological evidence of the relationship between relative, interrogative, and indefinite pronouns, since it can shed light on these phenomena. New insights can also be gained if we take into account the existence not only of restrictive and appositive relative clauses, but also of a third type – maximalizing relative clauses. The uses of *kwi-/kwo- relative clauses in older Indo-European languages suggest that the grammaticalization of this pronoun as a relative marker can be best explained as arising from its previous interrogative value and must have originated in maximalizing relative clauses.

The use of subject pronouns in Raeto-Romance : a contrastive study

2009

In Raeto-Romance, the expression of subject pronouns is considered obligatory like in French and unlike in Italian (i.a. Meyer-Lübke 1899). However, subject pronouns may remain unexpressed in certain contexts in Raeto-Romance varieties. In this paper, we investigate the use of subject pronouns in Raeto-Romance. For this purpose we carried out a field study covering Swiss Romansh and Dolomitic Ladin. This field study will be extended to Friulian. The Friulian data analysed in this paper are based on a preliminary corpus study, which serves as a starting point for this field study. We claim that the omission of subject pronouns in the Raeto-Romance varieties under consideration may be due to four main factors: discourse situation, syncretism, language contact and grammaticalisation. The paper is organised as follows: section 2 gives a brief general introduction presenting the language areas of Raeto-Romance and certain syntactic properties relevant to subject pronoun usage in these varieties. After that, section 3 presents methodological aspects and the results of our field study on subject pronoun usage in Swiss Romansh, Dolomitic Ladin and Friulian. Section 4 summarizes the main results of our investigation. A further discussion follows in section 5. 2. Raeto-Romance 2.1 Language areas Since Theodor Gartner (1883), the notion "Rätoromanisch" (engl. "Raeto-Romance") is used as an umbrella term for the varieties spoken in the three language areas of Swiss Romansh, Dolomitic Ladin and Friulian. 2 Swiss Romansh, which is further divided into the five subvarieties or linguistic idioms Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Putér and Vallader, is spoken in the Swiss Canton 1 Our study has been carried out within the research project "Evolution and Variation of Expletive and Neuter Pronouns in Romance Languages" (directed by Georg A. Kaiser), Collaborative Research Centre 471 "Variation and Evolution in the Lexicon", University of Konstanz, funded by the German Research Foundation. 2 However, the question whether these three language territories can in fact be conceived as one linguistic unit is discussed controversially in Romance linguistics (Liver 1999:15-28). The motivation to subsume the three language areas in question under that term, were mainly phonological in nature. They share 1) the realisation of word finals whereas the segment is deleted in Central Romance languages and varieties, 2) the conservative realisation of consonantal clusters of the type C+l (

Persistence and renewal in the relative pronoun paradigm: the case of Italian (original) (raw)

Related papers