Interactions between Clitic Subjects and Objects in Piedmont and North Liguria Dialects†
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Overall assessment
This manuscript addresses interesting questions concerning the interaction between subject and object clitics in Piedmont and North Liguria dialects. It makes an important and valuable contribution to the study clitic elements in Northern Italian dialects, as well as to the relation between the verb/auxiliary and the argumental clitics, by proposing a new analysis based on Chomsky’s (2019, 2020) Merge operation and the Labelling Algorithm. The paper is well-founded and nicely builds on the previous literature on these topics. It is generally well-written and clear, and the claims and the analysis are supported by the relevant data.
My only concerns about this manuscript are about (1) the structure and the organization of the sections, and (2) its originality, which is not always evident. I would thus like to suggest a set of revisions that might help the authors to improve the presentation of the data and of the argument, and to better highlight the originality of the paper. I add some specific comments and suggestions here below. Since they mostly concern the structure of the paper, rather than its contents, I have defined them “minor revisions”. However, I do believe that they must be carried out before the paper could be published, so I hope that the authors will take them into account when revising the paper.
Specific comments
(1) Structure and organization
After a short introduction, this manuscript begins with a description of the relevant set of phenomena: Piedmontese Franco-Provençal (§2), SCl and OCls in Apulian Franco-Provençal (§3) and clitic 3rd person and auxiliary (§4). The theoretical framework is then introduced in Section 5 and the analysis in Section 6. As it is, therefore, the reader has to go through 13 pages of data description before getting a better idea of the controversial issues related to these data and of their relevance for the theoretical part of the paper (in fact, the reader has to wait until page 15 for the analysis). This structure and organization of the paper is far from ideal. The authors should present their approach and analysis much earlier, so that the reader has a better understanding of the goals of the paper and of its novel contribution. It is obviously fine to provide a descriptive introduction of the phenomena under discussion at the beginning of the paper, but this should be much shorter and the details should be given after that the analysis has been presented, that is, when the analysis is applied to the data.
(2) Originality of the paper
Even though the authors duly cite the previous literature on the phenomena under investigation, it often unclear where the originality of this paper lies with respect to previous works, both empirically and theoretically. It is not clear, for example, if the data presented in the descriptive sections (§§ 2‒4) have already been discussed in the literature or are new. This should be clarified. If all data are already known from the previous literature, this descriptive part could be reduced in size, highlighting only the phenomena that are necessary for the analysis. The same applies to the theoretical part of the paper (§ 6). The authors do not discuss the previous analyses of the phenomena at issue, with a focus on their limits, unsolved issues or aspects that are still in need for a better understanding, so the advantages or the (possible) superiority of the proposed analysis remain somewhat blurred. The authors should better and more closely engage with the previous literature, both in the presentation of the data and in the exposition of their analysis, highlighting the new data, insights, and solutions.
Minor presentational issue:
Line 48: “dʒə/i ‘I’ is inserted in combination with 48 a following 1st/2nd person OCl”: unlike with the following phenomena, a cross-reference to the relevant examples is missing here. This should be added, even if the phenomenon is illustrated later in the paper, in a different section.
Typos:
- Abstract, line 5: a set of phenomenon > phenomena
- Line 77: In the pre4sence > presence
- Line 135: Is the reference to examples (18b, b') correct here?
- There are often unmotivated/incorrect full stops and commas:
- line 54: characterized by the stress, (we will propose…
- line 236: in all other contexts. in (11iii-vi)
- line 333: in the syntactic string. i.e. in reflexives
- line 339: Piedmontese dialects. i.e. the position of OCls
Author Response
All typos have been corrected
In accordance with the reviewer’s observations, we have inserted the initial part of section 6, concerning the presentation of the literature, in the Introduction. Moreover, we moved Section 5, regarding the discussion on the model, to the second section, before the Data.
The question of the 'originality' is briefly discussed in the footnote 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Interactions between clitic subjects and objects in Piedmont and North Liguria dialects
This article outlines a novel approach to clitic phenomena in Romance dialects. I find the contribution interesting and original from a purely theoretical view point, and have very few remarks on the analysis.
However, I find several issues with style and form in the article’s first part, that is, the pages dedicated to the empirical presentation. To my mind, before the article can be considered for publication, it needs a thorough formal and linguistic overview. I will make some suggestions below.
Language and style
I’m not a native speaker of English and hence will not comment extensively on the language. There are evident errors, however, and some misspellings, as for instance:
line 28, two main issue > issues
133, though certain phonological restriction can have palayed a role > a certain … played
667, ctive > active
754 the missing of this morphological mark > the absence of ?
From line 29 onwards:
… that is the distribution of the 1st person SCl in some Franco-Provençal dialects, and the distribution of the clitic of 3rd person/ definiteness l ambiguous between the reading of SCl and the one of OCl in Ligurian and Piedmontese dialects.
This doesn’t read very well. Does “one” refer to the reading? I suggest a more explicit way of stating this, and also to use shorter sentences (“On the one hand, we will investigate the distribution of … On the other hand, we will study the 3rd person clitic … This clitic is ambiguous between …”). And, by the way, why is “definiteness” mentioned here at all? Instead of 3rd person l, quite simply?
Line 309 after ex 15:
stay as the progressive auxiliary selects, in turn, mə.
> stay, which is the …, in turn selects mə
There may be some “copy and paste” errors as well, as on lines 12-14 in the abstract where the following appears to be an incomplete sentence:
… also to the effect that the 3 rd 12 person clitic occurs in all persons. where can be ambiguous between the subject or the object reading, based on the formal identity.
In brief, before resubmitting, the author(s) – henceforth A – should have the language checked.
Structure
The subdivision into sections could be thought through more carefully. As it is, we have:
2. Piedmontese Franco-Provençal
3. SCls and OCls in Apulian Franco-Provençal
3.1. Auxiliary constructs
4. Clitics of 3rd person and auxiliary
4.1. Ambiguous Cls of 3rd person
4.2. Always l
…
This organization of the contents is not very transparent. Section 2 could be labelled “SCls and OCls in Piedmontese Franco-Provençal” in analogy with 3. But more importantly, section 3 could be divided into 3.1 Lexical verbs, 3.2 Auxiliaries, for instance. If section 4 is dedicated to clitics of 3rd person in all of Piedmontese, this could be made explicit. And the title “Always l” is not very informative.
Formal errors and unclarities
Lines 47-48
In these dialects, the 1st person SCl, singular and plural, dʒə/i ‘I’ is inserted …
Should be ‘I’ or ‘we’
On line 81, it is said that the subject is realized as dʒə as in the examples in (5). But in all of them there is actually dʒi. This is mentioned on the next page, on line 135, where however there is a reference to ex 18b, b’. I suppose A means 5b, b’.
On line 81 there is also a mention of a neuter u, which however is absent from the examples in 5. What a “neuter u” means is not intuitively obvious to the reader. If this dialect has a three-way gender system, that could be said explicitly if it is important. Otherwise, the information could be left out.
Under 17 it is stated that the unaccusative verb appears with dʒə when in the above text it is explicitly said that unaccusatives take mə (line 264). (By the way, A could list passives as well in 17 since they are mentioned in the text.)
Examples and glosses
The glosses are sometimes inexact, sometimes doubtful.
Line 303: ‘I am lying / happy with you’
Line 496: ‘he/ she has (not) washes him/herself’
In 20b’, can’t the participle veg-u be realized with a/i/e endings? If not, there is something I haven’t really captured about the data.
21c is glossed “he/she has slept”, while the example has the negation marker within parenthesis.
Generally speaking, I think the presentation would benefit a lot from less alternatives in the examples. In 18ciii etc, for instance, do we really need the alternative him/me? In 15, do we need to exemplify with contento and alto, or do we need both lift and call in 22a-a’? Too many alternatives make the examples (much) more difficult to read. And if less alternatives are given, there is less risk of formal errors in the glosses.
Quite often, A comments upon the examples not in the order they appear, but inversely which creates an unnecessary obstacle for the reader. A refers to the examples 1b, 1a and 2a in that order (furthermore, there is no ex 2b). Also, on lines 419-420, A refers to 20a’, 20b’, and 20a’’, in that order.
Moreover, I think the prime system (a, a’, a’’ …) should be avoided, as well as roman numeration which by the way is not used coherently: 9ii a, but 18a i, ii … 23b i, ii etc
In fact, lists of conjugations, pronoun paradigms etc could preferably be given as tables and not as examples. As they stand, they are sometimes difficult to follow.
In 7, the SCl are given under 7a, while both OCl and Reflexives follow under 7b.
Under 7c, the strong forms are given. There is a heading “oblique” but no corresponding heading “subject”. The oblique series should be complete.
In a table, explicit direct objects could be left out, such as tuttə kwandə in 8c or lo ddra in 13b, which otherwise should be glossed (if they appear as examples).
Also, if tables are provided, A could specify in the table title which dialect is being exemplified, which would sometimes be helpful. The thing is that the article is about “dialects spoken in Piedmont and Liguria”, while attention is dedicated also to Franco-Provencal spoken in Puglia.
These are some suggestions to improve the paper from a formal perspective. The empirical presentation has to be made clearer in order for the reader to grasp the following analysis.
Author Response
We have corrected all typos and errors indicated by the reviewer and modified the points concerning language, formal errors and unclarities
the question of Roman numeration is discussed in the footnote 7
we have changed 7
we have changed the titles of sections, as suggested by the reviewer
the text has been completely controlled and section 6 has been made simpler and clearer by reducing and simplifying the discussion, now clearly based on Chomsky (2021), introduced in section 2. However, all the points of the theoretical discussion, also in section 2, have been simplified.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have satisfactorily addressed all the comments and suggestions made in the reviews and have so definitely improved the quality of the paper. All changes are also described and explained the reply letter. I thus believe that the paper can be published as it stands.
