1,721,785 research outputs found
Cases of apparent enclisis on past participles in Romance varieties
No full textThis paper deals with cases of apparent enclisis on past participles in North-Western Italian varieties. It is claimed that these cases do not involve clitic pronouns, but weak pronouns in the sense of Cardinaletti and Starke (1999). Both syntactic and morphophonological evidence is discussed. Some varieties display both proclitics and postverbal weak pronouns and use them in different syntactic contexts. Other varieties lack clitic pronouns in their lexicon altogether and only display weak pronouns (alongside strong pronouns), similarly to what happens in e.g. Germanic languages
On different types of postverbal subjects in Italian
No full textThis paper discusses the properties of different types of subjects occurring in postverbal position in Italian: (i) in situ focused subjects, (ii) marginalized, topic subjects, (iii) heavy subjects. The data show that postverbal subjects convey different discourse-related values. We suggest that while left-peripheral positions syntactically encode different discourse-related features (see Rizzi’s 1997 cartography of the left-periphery), the VP-internal thematic positions are compatible with different discourse-related properties. In the postverbal space, no one-to-one correlation between interpretation and syntactic structure appears to be needed. Our conclusion differs from previous work (most notably, Belletti 2001, 2004) which assumes an IP-internal articulation of discourse-related positions immediately above VP and is in line with previous analyses of some of the constructions analyzed here (Cardinaletti 2001, 2002; Brunetti 2004; Bocci 2013; Samek-Lodovici 2015). The paper also discusses new-information preverbal subjects in some varieties of Italian
Cliticization as Extraction: The Big DP Hypothesis Revisited
No full textIn this paper, it is argued that cliticization is extraction out of a big DP. Big DPs contain both clitic pronouns and associate DP arguments (Torrego, 1995; Uriagereka, 1995, 2005, among others). The DP can be pronounced, which gives rise to a clitic doubling configuration, or can be null, in which case a simple clitic configuration is obtained. This hypothesis allows us to explain not only the limited movement possibilities of clitic pronouns (cf. Belletti 1999), but also their restricted inventory: Not all complements can be cliticized. If clitic pronouns are reduced maximal projections (Cardinaletti and Starke, 1999), the big DP hypothesis needs to be revisited. Clitic pronouns cannot be assumed to be the heads of big DPs, as was suggested in the above-mentioned proposals. The proposal is that clitic pronouns are merged as specifiers of the highest projection of big DPs, namely K(ase)P, which also captures the fact that they are the only elements which bear morphological case in languages like Italian
Fuer eine syntaktische Analyse von Modalpartkeln
No full textDie zahlreiche Literatur über Modalpartikeln (MP) im Deutschen konzentriert sich vor allem auf ihre pragmatischen Eigenschaften und ihr Diskursverhalten. Was hingegen fehlt, ist eine systematische Analyse ihrer syntaktischen Eigenschaften. In diesem Beitrag werden einige grundlegende Aspekte diskutiert, die durch eine weitergehende Analyse auf diesem Gebiet vertieft werden sollten. In Abschn. 1 werde ich mich auf die syntaktische Kategorie der MP konzentrieren, in Abschn. 2 auf ihre Distribution und in Abschn. 3 auf ihren syntaktischen Status. Ergebnis dieser Betrachtungen wird die Analyse der MP als „schwache“ Adverbien sein (im Sinne von Cardinaletti/Starke 1999), die sich im modalen Teil der Satzstruktur befinden
Cleft wh-questions as biclausal structures. A comparison with simple wh-questions, cleft declaratives, and focalizations
No full textThe aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate on the internal structure of cleft sentences by (i) analysing the distribution of subjunctive mood, lexical subjects, and perché ‘why’ in Italian declarative and interrogative cleft sentences and (ii) discussing a difference between simple and cleft wh-questions. While simple wh-questions with marginalized DPs (in the sense of Antinucci and Cinque 1977 and Cardinaletti 2001, 2002) are ambiguous between a subject and an object reading of those DPs, cleft wh-questions are not ambiguous: The marginalized material can only be the subject. The paper investigates the syntactic, pragmatic, and prosodic properties of cleft wh-questions and compares them to simple wh-questions, cleft declaratives, and focalizations
Una proposta per l’insegnamento linguistico del latino e del greco antico: alcune considerazioni generali
No full textIl paper contiene una proposta per l’insegnamento linguistico delle lingue classiche ispirata dalla nuova metodologia comparativa, che si è dimostrata estremamente proficua sia negli studi più recenti in linguistica teorica (v. i lavori ispirati da Chomsky 1981 e per una sintesi esemplificativa Haegeman, a cura di, 1997) sia nell’applicazione didattica alle lingue moderne (v. per una discussione recente Cardinaletti 2002). La proposta nasce dall’esigenza di promuovere una conoscenza consapevole delle lingue classiche, nell’ambito di una più ampia riflessione sulle proprietà che accomunano le lingue classiche a molte lingue moderne già note allo studente, tra cui la lingua madre. Obiettivo primario è quello di sviluppare nello studente la competenza della comprensione di testi scritti in latino (e, solo per i licei classici, in greco antico).
Gli strumenti che riteniamo necessario utilizzare sono quelli della moderna linguistica sincronica e diacronica, in chiave comparativa. Il metodo comparativo, teso a valorizzare le proprietà comuni delle lingue, permetterà di fondare l’apprendimento delle lingue classiche su conoscenze linguistiche già acquisite dallo studente o comunque a lui più familiari. Questo permette di semplificare la descrizione dei fenomeni linguistici e il trattamento delle eccezioni
Introduction: On Peripheries
No full textBrief introduction on studies of the left periphery in comparative perspective
Chapter 2. Theory-driven approaches and empirical advances
No full textItalo-Romance varieties present at least three types of constructions that cluster together two verbs displaying double tense and double subject agreement and are taken as Pseudo-Coordinations (PseCos) or Multiple Agreement Constructions (MACs). In this paper, we follow Cardinaletti and Giusti’s (1998, 2001, 2003, 2020) hypotheses and claim that unification between the PseCos with a and the MACs with mu/mi/ma or ku in Southern Italian dialects is not viable. We adopt a diagnostic tool, which we call a protocol, that clusters the predictions of theory-driven analyses and apply it to the ‘take and’ construction, which is widespread across dialects and productive in Italian. In doing so, we discuss unobserved facts arising in the well-studied dialectal structures and make fine-grained observations about the less studied ‘take and’ PseCo in Italian
The syntax of the Italian indefinite determiner dei
No full textThis paper provides a syntactic analysis of the indefinite plural determiner dei in Italian, also called ‘partitive article’, as in Ho visto dei
ragazzi (I saw de.art boys). It argues that dei is neither parallel to the inflected preposition dei in: Ho visto alcuni dei ragazzi (I saw some ofthe
boys), nor to the quantifier alcuni in: Ho visto alcuni ragazzi (I saw some boys), contra previous literature. We support a simple DPanalysis
which takes dei as the plural counterpart of the indefinite article un, and claim that dei-nominals do not have a QPstructure, as
proposed for quantified nominals in Cardinaletti and Giusti (1992, 2006, in press). We propose that de- is an uninflected determiner in
SpecDP, which cooccurs with an overt morpheme (-i) in D, realizing Gender and Number. This accounts for the apparent morphological
similarity of this concord morpheme with the definite article, without the need to attribute referential or kind-denoting interpretation to it.
The paper also investigates differences and similarities between dei-nominals and bare plurals
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