16 th Cambridge Italian Dialect Syntax-Morphology Meeting CIDSM 16_Programme (original) (raw)

The syntax-pragmatics interface in north-eastern Italian dialects : consequences for the geometry of the left periphery

2019

and recostruction of Proto-Sovramontino's plural morphology prior the loss of word-finals. The masculine noun is 'dog' and the feminine noun is 'chair'. 2.2 Tonic and atonic pronouns in Fornese. 2.3 Tonic and atonic pronouns in Sovramontino. 2.4 Renzi and Vanelli's (1983) NID categories on the basis of the distribution of obligatory SCLs across the different persons of the verb. 2.5 Negation and SCLs in Sovramontino and Fornese. 2.6 Atonic pronouns in Sovramontino. 2.7 Atonic pronouns in Fornese. 2.8 Present indicative conjugation of the verb 'to eat' in Friulian. 2.9 SCL forms vs. verb inflection forms in the relevant grammatical persons in Sovramontino and Fornese. 3.1 Affirmative and interrogative SCLs in Lamonat and Sovramontino. 3.2 The internal makeup of the tonic wh-word aonde in Lamonat and Sovramontino according to Munaro and Poletto (2014). 3.3 Tonic and clitic wh-elements in Lamonat and Sovramontino. 5.1 The typology of contrastive elements in Lamonat and Sovramontino with respect to Molnár's (2002, 2006) revised discourse-functions of contrastiveness. 5.2 Revised Hierarchy of Contrast for Lamonat and Sovramontino. List of Figures 2.1 Geographical distribution of the four NEIDs under investigation and their neighbouring Romance varieties. 41 4.1 Pitch contour of the root interrogative in (58) featuring an apparently in-situ wh-element 189 4.2 First, I would like to thank my supervisors Prof. Delia Bentley and Dr. Julio Villa-García for their help, guidance and feedback in the construction of this thesis. In the last two years of my Ph.D. programme, Dr. Julio Villa-García has been an excellent mentor: he taught me how to 'think syntactically' within generative syntax and made a perfect 'captive audience' for my moments of syntactic euphoria. I have no words to express the sense of gratitude that I feel towards Prof. Delia Bentley. In the past eight years, she has been a role model and solid reference point in my life. I also want to thank my former co-supervisor Dr. Laurel MacKenzie, particularly for her guidance and help with data management. I am also very grateful to Prof. Eva Schultze-Berndt for her constructive criticism and frank feedback throughout my Ph.D. programme. Second, I would like to thank the speech communities of Forni di Sopra, Lamon and Sovramonte. Informants literally welcomed me in their homes and put up with my time-consuming interviews. In the community of Forni di Sopra, I am especially grateful to Alfio Anziutti for his help with the recruitment of informants, and Rossella Fachin for sharing her unpublished materials on Fornese. I also want to thank all the Fornese speakers that I interviewed, in particular Danilo, Reli and Cami. Special thanks go to Genni Sacchetti for her help in my pilot investigation of Fornese. In the community of Lamon, I want to thank the former council member Stefano Facchin for his irreplaceable help with the recruitment of informants. A big thank you goes to the local folk association 'Drio le peche' and its president Emma Gaio Maillard. I would like to thank all the Lamonat speakers who took part in the interviews, especially Maleta, Bacan, and Molina. In the community of Sovramonte, I would like to thank the Mayor Federico Dalla Torre for his help in setting my fieldwork in motion. I would also like to thank Luciano Reato and the Pro-Loco Sovramonte for their help with the recruitment of informants. I am especially grateful to the family Morosoche for actively taking part in the interviews, namely Lorenzo, Giuliano, Luigino, Antonietta and Cirio. A huge thank you goes to my very own grandmother Elsa Facchin for being a particularly patient speaker of Sovramontino. I am also grateful to Pierin and Giamba who impeccably represented the tiny village of Aune. Finally, many thanks to the Friulian speakers in my hometown who gladly accepted to be interviewed, above all

Ledgeway, Adam, 2023. ‘Differential object marking in the dialects of southern Italy’, in Anna Pineda (ed.), Differential Object Marking in Romance, special issue of Caplletra. Revista Internacional de Filologia 74:1-36. DOI: 10.7203/Caplletra.74.22958.

Caplletra. Revista Internacional de Filologia, 2023

This article undertakes a descriptive overview of the variation in the distribution and licensing of differential object marking across a wide range of dialects of the south of Italy. It is shown how variation in this area is not random, but follows patterns of structured variation which can be modelled in a scalar fashion in terms of four broad splits based on grammatical person, and on pronominal–nominal, head–phrasal and animacy/specificity oppositions. These four broad dimensions of variation are, in turn, demonstrated to conceal a number of more subtle differences of a microvariational nature. This microvariation, it is suggested, can be read not only horizontally as synchronic variation across the dialects, but also vertically to provide some key insights into the diachronic development of (Italo-)Romance DOM.

Syntactic variation and the dialects of Italy: an overview

Excerpt More information volume, but rather as a strength, insofar as it illustrates how clear and systematic descriptions of the dialect data can consistently be exploited to yield and test empirically robust generalizations, as well as profitably inform and challenge a rich and diverse set of theoretical assumptions. By way of an introduction to the volume, we sketch below a general overview of the state of the art in Italian dialect syntax according to the three thematic areas identified above, outlining the principal aspects of diatopic, diachronic and typological variation, as well as a critical assessment of the role of Italian dialect data in informing and shaping recent developments in linguistic theory. 2. The pronominal domain: DP-NP structure, clitics and null subjects 2.1. 'You must get dressed' (Fas., Benincà 1994c: 134) 2 The latter republished as Rizzi (1982: ch. 1) and Rizzi (2000a).

When you have too many features: Auxiliaries, agreement and clitics in Italian varieties

Volume 2, 2017

Syntactic variation can be ascribed to a range of factors. The Borer-Chomsky conjecture, as Mark Baker (2008) refers to it, states for instance that all parameters of variation are attributable to differences in the features of particular items (e.g. functional heads) in the lexicon. In this paper, this hypothesis is carefully considered in relation to a group of Abruzzese dialects that exhibit three seemingly unrelated syntactic patterns: split auxiliary selection, split differential object marking, and omnivorous participial agreement in number/argumental agreement mismatch marking. It will be proposed that these three patterns are closely interrelated, and can be attributed to the presence of an unvalued bundle of φ-features (π). Depending on which XP this head is merged with, different agreement patterns will emerge. Furthermore, these dialects will be shown to differ from another macrogroup of northern Italian dialects purely in the locus of Merge of this extra functional head:...

What is changing in Italian today? Phenomena of restandardization in syntax and morphology: an overview

Since the 1980s, many authors have pointed out a series of phenomena involving linguistic traits that represent a somewhat new trend in the development of contemporary Italian. Most of these phenomena, which usually imply a larger amount of variation, are interpretable as a change in the sociolinguistic value of the trait itself. Forms and structures already existing in substandard Italian lost their markedness as elements of low, spoken social and situational varieties, becoming common in the usage of educated people and to a certain extent in written language, particularly in newspapers, nowadays an important vehicle of standardization. A few further phenomena represent cases of true innovation, mainly influenced by contact with English. On the whole, a partially renewed norm of Italian, a neo-standard Italian, has emerged. This chapter aims at discussing some aspects of this restandardization on the background of the present sociolinguistic situation of Italy, and giving an overall picture of their main morpho-syntactic phenomena. A commented list of features involved in that dynamics will be provided, serving as a frame of reference for other chapters of the volume. The list includes amongst other things: left and right dislocation; restructuration in pronominal system; various dynamics in the use of verb forms; overextension of the complementizer che ['that']; formation of new syntactic patterns (as an interrogative wh-clause with a double focus or an ordinal relative superlative); diffusion of prefixation with formatives such as super-, iper-, mega-, euro- ,-poli. Some phenomena pertaining to the " linguistic custom " will also be considered, e.g. the grammaticalization of tipo ['like'] as an adverb.