Search Results (10)

This article provides a short introduction to Balkan Romance, examining and exemplifying a number of its principal features. In particular, the discussion begins in §2 with a review of the main morphosyntactic features of the four principal sub-branches of Old Romanian spoken today within the Balkan Sprachbund (Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Aromanian), tracing the treatment of such Balkanisms both in the traditional philological literature (§3) and their more recent formalization and expansion in the theoretical literature dedicated to the Balkan Sprachbund (§4). This is followed in §5 by a discussion of some of the dialects spoken in southern Italy and their key morphosyntactic features. These varieties, although not situated in the Balkan Sprachbund proper, have nonetheless either developed under contact with Balkan languages, as in the case of the Romance dialects of the extreme south of Italy which have been in centuries-long contact with Greek (§5.1), or, in the case of Italo-Albanian, have evolved under contact with local Italo-Romance varieties (§5.2). The discussion concludes in §6 with an overview of the principal issues discussed in each of the contributions. Full article

This article explores the order of possessives with respect to nouns in Megleno-Romanian, a branch of Daco-Romance, and Eolian, a variety of southern Italo-Romance. Both are in intense language contact situations, the former with the south Slavonic varieties of Bulgarian and Macedonian, the latter with the southern Italo-Romance variety of Sicilian along with southern regional Italian. In particular, we show that while superficially, both Megleno-Romanian and Eolian copied the patterns found in their respective contact languages, the situation is much more complex. Megleno-Romanian shows high noun movement with kinship terms and low noun movement with common nouns, a situation also found in south Slavonic. In the case of Eolian, younger speakers categorically lack N-to-D movement with kinship terms, reflecting the typical Sicilian pattern. In both cases, this gives rise to prenominal possessives, thus diverging from the most common position of possessives in Eastern Romance, which are generally postnominal in unmarked contexts. Ultimately, these case studies show that the position of possessives is epiphenomenal to the level of noun movement in the varieties under investigation. On this note, deeper structural borrowing concerning the nature of possessives (i.e., whether they have an adjectival or determiner value) did not emerge in our findings and is worthy of further investigation. Full article

Grammaticalization has long been understood as a process that takes place gradually, but within it, discrete and abrupt changes take place. This tension has been reconciled by claiming that the semblance of a gradual process is given by different parts of a construction undergoing changes at different points in time. Focusing on synchronic microvariation as gradience, this article discusses cases of clitic loss in four Romance varieties (Brazilian Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, some northeastern Italo-Romance varieties, and French), and identifies common patterns in the cells of the paradigms that are most vulnerable to the process of loss. Relating the grammatical and semantic properties of these cells to established typological hierarchies, the paper explores how general cognitive principles can account for the key properties of gradualness and gradience and, ultimately, language change. Full article

In this paper, I explore the properties and the uses of the past participles in the Arbëresh variety of S. Nicola dell’Alto, an Albanian dialect still spoken in Southern Italy, which has been in contact with Italo-Romance varieties for more than five centuries. The data are discussed in comparison to standard Albanian and the contact language, Italian. In Albanian grammar, there is only one type of participle: the past participle. It has both verbal and adjectival properties. As a verbal form, the participle is used in compound and in periphrastic tenses, in combination with both the auxiliaries KAM ‘have’ and JAM ‘be’. It can also be used in combination with other particles to create non-finite verbal forms such as gerund or infinitive or to build up temporal expressions. Finally, it can also be used after some modal impersonal verbs. Verbal participles never show agreement. Albanian participles can also be adjectival. All the adjectives derived by a participial verb take a linking article and always agree with the noun they modify in gender, number, Case and definiteness. The formal distinction of the verbal participles from adjectival participles seems to correlate with the aspectual properties of the construction: a verbal participle appears in eventive structures, whereas an adjectival participle occurs in stative structures. But, as we shall see, this is not always the case. Arbëresh participles have maintained the same morphological and syntactical properties of Albanian. They can be used both in stative and in eventive contexts, but in Arbëresh eventive passives, which are built up as in Italian rather than as in Albanian, the adjectival participles are always inflected. Agreement is obligatory in all the contexts where it is in Italian. This is a clear contact-induced change. The data presented in this paper show that Arbëresh, on the one hand, preserves features of Albanian grammar, whereas, on the other hand, it has undergone changes under the influence of the surrounding Italo-Romance varieties. Full article

In this article, we examine a specific type of Wh-Doubling (WhD) that can be observed in some Northern Lombard varieties. Differently from all the previous types of WhD described for Lombard and other Northern Italo-Romance varieties, in the phenomenon we analyze, the two wh-forms are identical and display the -ɛ morpheme. Furthermore, in all the varieties where this type of WhD is present, it is associated with the encoding of special questions and cannot be used in true requests for new information. We propose an analysis of this construction assuming a split-CP representation where the higher wh-form activates a functional projection involved in the expression of special questions. We also hypothesize that this construction derives from an interrogative cleft; if this hypothesis is correct, the formation of the -ɛ morpheme and the re-analysis of the cleft as monoclausal are the two sides of the same process. Full article

This article describes and discusses some properties of the distribution of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in the Italo-Romance domain, taking into account both varieties of Italian and varieties of other Italo-Romance languages. More precisely, the authors examine non-negative contexts, which allow the presence of NCIs. Across all non-negative contexts, bare/pronominal NCIs are systematically allowed in more contexts than complex ones, modulo the behavior of the specific variety in relation to non-negative contexts. The phenomenon can be accounted for by assuming that the structure of complex and bare NCIs is different not only in terms of null versus lexically realized NPs. The authors argue that bare NCIs, and possibly other quantificational elements, are not paired with a null DP but with a reduced structure, i.e., a classifier-like element which contains no lexical N. Full article

Deictic information is present in every language; yet, there are significant differences as to how exactly such information is encoded, yielding different indexical systems across languages. The availability of cross-linguistic variation in indexical systems provides a window into the role of contact in shaping grammars: this work contributes to the discussion by investigating whether contact plays any role in determining the grammar of indexicality in heritage varieties. This study has a two-fold aim. Empirically, it investigates ternary demonstrative systems in heritage southern Italo-Romance varieties: on the basis of comprehension and production data, these systems are shown to be in the process of undergoing change. Theoretically, it underscores the insights that the combined microcontact and diachronic perspective provides for the understanding of variation and change in heritage languages: while, at face value, the elicited heritage data seem to indicate that demonstratives are affected by contact, pairwise comparisons across heritage varieties and diachronic observations lead to rejecting a plain contact-induced explanation and to conclude, instead, that deictic elements are largely unaffected by contact and that their change in heritage varieties is, rather, endogenous. Full article

This paper addresses the question of structural change in relative clauses in heritage speakers of two varieties of Venetan, a northern Italo-Romance language. It will be shown that appositive and restrictive relative clauses are not structurally distinguished in Brazilian Venetan, while they display different structural properties in Italian Venetan. It will be proposed that the phenomenon described in the paper does not depend on transfer from another language and it is not exclusively a matter of processing. The approach presented here aims to account for structural change in syntactic terms, without resorting to extra-linguistic factors. Heritage grammars are autonomous systems and follow predictable paths of language variation, as such, variation may take place at an interface level and at a syntactic level alike. This does not exclude possible influences from the dominant language, which, however, do not need to be taken as the only triggers of change. Full article

Optionality is an issue within the minimalist theory of language, in which the principle of the “last resort” does not admit competing options to express the same meaning. What is needed is a solid empirical base showing that apparently competing forms do specialize for some syntactic/semantic traits. Hence, the aim of this pilot study is to investigate optionality in the choice of competing indefinite determiners in Piacentine, an Italo-Romance variety spoken in north-western Italy. Sixteen native Piacentine speakers were presented with a questionnaire to collect linguistic data. Statistical analyses of the data were performed to seek correlations between the choice of the indefinite determiners and some syntactic/semantic traits that were controlled for. The results indicate that Piacentine displays four main determiners, labeled ART, di+art, bare di, and ZERO. ART and di+art are the most widespread determiners allowing both narrow and wide scope and occurring in all the investigated contexts. Bare di is instead the unmarked form for expressing non-existential indefiniteness in negative contexts and only has narrow scope. ZERO co-varies with bare di, and its use was strengthened by contact with Italian, preventing its loss, differently from French, which lost ZERO instead. Full article

This paper discusses two negation types (standard negation (SN), negative doubling (ND)) in Chipileño Spanish, a variety that has emerged as a result of contact between Spanish and Veneto (an Italo-Romance language) in Mexico. In Veneto, negation can be formed in two ways: preverbally (SN) and as a negative doubling (ND). Based on sporadic observation, bilingual speakers of Spanish and Veneto transfer a final no while speaking Spanish, a language that does not allow repetition of the same negator in the postverbal position. Using both a spontaneous and a controlled tasks, the results show two possibilities: preverbal negation only (no vino ‘[S/he] did not come’) and sentence final (no me gusta no ‘I do not like’) in both tasks. This study compares the findings from Chipileño Spanish to the other Romance varieties that exhibit similar cases of negation, while discussing its scope and relevance to discourse-pragmatic factors. Full article