Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy PDF Author: Delia Bentley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198745265
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This volume provides the first ever large-scale comparative treatment of there sentences (there copula NP), reporting the results of a survey of Italo-Romance and Sardinian dialects of Italy. The volume comprises detailed discussions of focus structure, predication and argument realization, the definiteness effects, and the linking from semantics to syntax in there sentences, advancing novel proposals in each case. The testing of influential hypotheses on existential constructions against first-hand dialect evidence leads the book to argue that existential and locative there sentences differ in focus structure and semantics, although their not being predicate focus constructions and the non-canonicality of the predicate?which is typically referential'is reflected in their shared morphosyntactic features. The hypothesis that the pivot is the predicate of the existential construction is adopted in the analysis, although a distinction is drawn between referential and non-referential pivots, which explains variation in pivot behaviour in morphosyntax. The volume also provides the historical background of Romance there sentences, relying on the findings of the analysis of a substantial corpus of early Italo-Romance vernacular texts.

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy PDF Author: Delia Bentley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198745265
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This volume provides the first ever large-scale comparative treatment of there sentences (there copula NP), reporting the results of a survey of Italo-Romance and Sardinian dialects of Italy. The volume comprises detailed discussions of focus structure, predication and argument realization, the definiteness effects, and the linking from semantics to syntax in there sentences, advancing novel proposals in each case. The testing of influential hypotheses on existential constructions against first-hand dialect evidence leads the book to argue that existential and locative there sentences differ in focus structure and semantics, although their not being predicate focus constructions and the non-canonicality of the predicate?which is typically referential'is reflected in their shared morphosyntactic features. The hypothesis that the pivot is the predicate of the existential construction is adopted in the analysis, although a distinction is drawn between referential and non-referential pivots, which explains variation in pivot behaviour in morphosyntax. The volume also provides the historical background of Romance there sentences, relying on the findings of the analysis of a substantial corpus of early Italo-Romance vernacular texts.

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy PDF Author: Delia Bentley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191806230
Category : Italian language
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This publication provides a large-scale comparative treatment of 'there' sentences (there copula NP), reporting the results of a survey of over 100 Italo-Romance and Sardinian dialects spoken in Italy. It addresses key issues in linguistic theory and offers a valuable source of data for research on the Romance languages.

Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax

Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax PDF Author: Andreas Dufter
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311037708X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 977

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Book Description
This volume offers theoretically informed surveys of topics that have figured prominently in morphosyntactic and syntactic research into Romance languages and dialects. We define syntax as being the linguistic component that assembles linguistic units, such as roots or functional morphemes, into grammatical sentences, and morphosyntax as being an umbrella term for all morphological relations between these linguistic units, which either trigger morphological marking (e.g. explicit case morphemes) or are related to ordering issues (e.g. subjects precede finite verbs whenever there is number agreement between them). All 24 chapters adopt a comparative perspective on these two fields of research, highlighting cross-linguistic grammatical similarities and differences within the Romance language family. In addition, many chapters address issues related to variation observable within individual Romance languages, and grammatical change from Latin to Romance.

Existential Constructions across Languages

Existential Constructions across Languages PDF Author: Laure Sarda
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027252882
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
This volume reflects the centrality of the existential construction in current linguistic research and offers studies that both consolidate and challenge established research agendas. It addresses (i) a variety of constructions related to ‘prototypical’ existentials (including the have-possessive construction), and investigates (ii) the relationships between locative, existential, and information structure, (iii) the quantification of the pivot and (iv) the issue of negative existentials. It brings together different and complementary approaches (functional, cognitive, pragmatic, typological, comparative, diachronic, philosophical) based on a wide variety of data sources. The contributions illustrate how the so-called existential construction can take a variety of forms – more or less grammaticalized – and functions – ranging from the expression of literal existence to that of localization and discursive focus – in a wide range of languages. The book will be valuable for linguists, researchers or students, interested in the cross-linguistic manifestations of existential constructions at the interface between syntax, semantics and information structure.

Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance

Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance PDF Author: Susann Fischer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110394839
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 701

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Book Description
Different components of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. It has been under debate what the actual range of interaction is and how we can most appropriately represent this in grammatical theory. The volume provides a general overview of various topics in the linguistics of Romance languages by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components and functions as a state-of-the-art report, but at the same time as a manual of Romance languages.

Definiteness Effects

Definiteness Effects PDF Author: Susann Fischer
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443898007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
This volume explores in detail the empirical and conceptual content of the definiteness effect in grammar. It brings together a variety of relevant observations from a typological, diachronic and a bilingual/second language acquisition perspective, and provides a general overview of different approaches concerned with the syntactic, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the Definiteness Effect in a series of European and non-European languages.

Variation and Change in Gallo-Romance Grammar

Variation and Change in Gallo-Romance Grammar PDF Author: Sam Wolfe
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198840179
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
This volume offers a wide-range of case studies on variation and change in the sub-family of the Romance languages that includes French and Occitan: Gallo-Romance. Both standard and non-standard Gallo-Romance data can be of enormous value to studies of morphosyntactic variation and change, yet, as the volume demonstrates, non-standard and comparative Gallo-Romance data have often been lacking in both synchronic and diachronic studies. Following an introduction that sets out the conceptual background, the volume is divided into three parts whose chapters explore a variety of topics in the domains of sentence structure, the verb complex, and word structure. The empirical foundation of the volume is exceptionally rich, drawing on standard and non-standard data from French, Occitan, Francoproven�al, Picard, Wallon, and Norman. This diversity is also reflected in the theoretical and conceptual approaches adopted, which span traditional philology, sociolinguistics, formal morphological and syntactic theory, semantics, and discourse-pragmatics. The volume will thus be an indispensable tool for researchers and students in French and (Gallo-) Romance linguistics as well as for readers interested in grammatical theory, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics.

Information Structuring of Spoken Language from a Cross-linguistic Perspective

Information Structuring of Spoken Language from a Cross-linguistic Perspective PDF Author: M. M. Jocelyne Fernandez-Vest
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110393352
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Information structure and the organization of oral texts have been rarely studied crosslinguistically. This book contains studies of the grammatical organization of information in languages from different areas (e.g. Amazonian, Finno-Ugric, South-Asian) from a variety of theoretical angles. It will be a valuable resource for researchers investigating the interaction of morphosyntax and discourse in familiar and less familiar languages.

Non-prototypical Clefts in French

Non-prototypical Clefts in French PDF Author: Lena Karssenberg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110586436
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
This monograph is the first large-scale corpus analysis of French il y a clefts. While most research on clefts focusses on the English ‘prototypical’ it-cleft and its equivalents across languages, this study examines the lesser-known il y a clefts – of both presentational-eventive and specificational type – and provides an in-depth analysis of their syntactic, semantic and discourse-functional properties. In addition to an extensive literature review and a comparison with Italian c’è clefts and with French c’est clefts, the strength of the study lies in the critical approach it develops to the common definition of clefts. Several commonly used criteria for clefts are applied to the corpus data, revealing that these criteria often lead to ambiguous results. The reasons for this ambiguity are explored, thus leading to a better understanding of what constitutes a cleft. In this sense, the analysis will be of interest to specialists of Romance and non-Romance clefts alike.

Grammar of Central Trentino

Grammar of Central Trentino PDF Author: Jan Casalicchio
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004430970
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
The Grammar of Central Trentino provides a comprehensive grammatical description of a Romance dialect spoken in the North-East of Italy. The description of morphological, syntactic and pragmatic phenomena is accessible to a non-specialist public interested in Romance varieties.