1,720,976 research outputs found
A Protocol for Indefinite Determiners in Italian and Italo-Romance
Full text linkThis paper focuses on weak indefinite nominals in Italian and Italo-Romance varieties. It presents the rich variation found across Italo-Romance in a pan-Romance perspective and claims that Italo-Romance displays a robust use of the definite article with indefinite interpretation, unlike many other Romance varieties. The paper provides an overview of different semantic and syntactic contexts in which indefiniteness can be detected and distinguished from reference to kind, which is also expressed by the definite article in all Romance languages. The paper then provides diagnostics to capture the dimensions of variation and optionality among five different indefinite determiners: the so-called “partitive article”, the apparent definite article, the bare preposition di, the zero article of bare nouns, and the grammaticalized adjective “certain”. The diagnostics are structured in a “protocol” fashion, that is, a metatheoretical way to structure research questions, design a questionnaire, present and analyze empirical results, abstracting from theory-internal issues. A pilot running of the questionnaire on informal Italian and dialectal data will be presented and analyzed. The results enable us to give a preliminary answer to two general research questions: What is the distribution of the indefinite determiners in modern Italian dialects in contact with Standard Italian? What is the distribution of indefinite determiners in regional varieties of modern Italian in contact with the local dialects
The Rise and Fall of Partitive Markers in Some Germanic Varieties
No full textThis paper aims at a comparative analysis of “partitive markers” in the Germanic noun phrase, both in a diachronic and a diatopic perspective. In older Germanic, as in other Indo-European languages, one of the functions of genitive case within the dp is the marking of (pseudo-)partitivity. So-called independent
partitive genitives are abundantly attested for Old and Middle High German. The decline of the genitive case necessarily led to the loss of the possibility to express part-whole relations. Some modern varieties of Continental West Germanic, however, exhibit remnants of this use of genitive forms, such as Walliser and Walser German dialects as well as Luxembourgish. In other varieties, the loss of the genitive led to the development of new markers or the reuse of forms, such as the preposition von/van ‘from, of’ in Southern Rhine Franconian or Dutch. In many contexts, the Germanic markers pattern with the so-called “partitive article” in French and Italian, which raises the question of the possible role of contact given that several of the varieties investigated are situated in the Germanic-Romance contact zone. We will take a closer look
at the formation and the functions of these structures, in order to better understand their distribution and semantics, not least in comparison with bare noun phrases. Finally, we will draw a parallel to the corresponding pronouns
Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article
Full text linkThis volume edited by Tabea Ihsane focuses on different aspects of the distribution, semantics, and internal structure of nominal constituents with a “partitive article” in its indefinite interpretation and of potentially corresponding bare nouns. It further deals with diachronic issues, such as grammaticalization and evolution in the use of “partitive articles”.
The outcome is a snapshot of current research into “partitive articles” and the way they relate to bare nouns, in a cross-linguistic perspective and on new data: the research covers noteworthy data (fieldwork data and corpora) from Standard languages - like French and Italian, but also German - to dialectal and regional varieties, including endangered ones like Francoprovençal
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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