Adam Ledgeway

Verb Movement, Adverbs and Clitic Positions in Romance

Abstract The present article explores so-called interpolation structures in the dialects of southern Italy where, in contrast to most standard Romance varieties, the otherwise inseparable nexus consisting of clitic and verb can be interrupted by a specific class of intervening adverbs. In addition to providing substantial independent evidence for Cinques (1999) richly-articulated clause structure and strictly ordered sequence of adverb positions, the proposed analysis of the southern Italian dialect data is demonstrated to shed light on the nature of pronominal cliticization and verb movement in Romance more generally. In particular, cliticization and verb movement are argued to variously target one of two positions in Romance, one associated with a clause-medial functional projection and the other associated with a relatively low functional projection, giving rise to four possible language types in accordance with attested Romance parametric variation.

Variation in the Romance infinitive: the case of the southern Calabrian inflected infinitive

In the present article we shall reconsider the category infinitive in Romance and, in particular, examine the variation in function and form exhibited by the various species of Romance infinitive. Despite a number of differences, the range of variation exhibited by such infinitival forms is not unconstrained. Rather, basing ourselves on a proper understanding of the formal properties of such infinitival forms, it is possible to define a macrocategory of infinitive, within which all the various species of Romance infinitive may be felicitously subsumed. In the light of such a definition of the category of Romance infinitive, we shall propose a new candidate for infinitival status from the dialects spoken in southern Calabria, which are traditionally described as making very little use of the infinitive, regularly using in its place finite clauses on a par with the indigenous Greek dialects of this region. It is these same finite clauses that we shall argue are, in fact, inflected infinitival constructions. Though a controversial hypothesis, departing considerably from standard accounts, it will be demonstrated that traditional analyses like those of Rohlfs (1969: 717; 1972) have long obscured the real facts behind such constructions. Instead, it emerges from the analysis presented here that such clauses are, at least in synchronic terms, most definitely Romance in character, thereby confuting traditional claims (see Joseph 1983) that continue to characterise the modern dialects of southern Calabria as partaking in the widespread Balkan feature of infinitive-loss.

Il sistema completivo dei dialetti meridionali : la doppia serie di complementatori

This paper considers the distribution of the dual complementizer system in the early dialects of southern Italy, highlighting how the occurrence of the two complementizers proves sensitive to the presence of topics and foci. Although traditionally argued to involve two distinct lexical complementizers, the apparent complementizer alternations observed in such dialects are shown to find a more natural explanation in terms of an analysis which views the two complementizers simply as distinct realisations of a single underlying complementizer, which is variously spelt out in two distinct morphological forms in accordance with the different positions it targets within the C-space. Significantly, these various movement operations through the C-space affecting the complementizer are demonstrated to have an overt reflex at PF in a number of revealing cases in the form of phonetically overt traces (or copies) left in various functional heads by the complementizer as it raises through the left periphery

SYNTACTIC AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY AND CHANGE

Introduction There is general recognition among Romanists of all theoretical persuasions (see Harris 1978:5f.; Bauer 1995:5; La Fauci 1997:11f. Zamboni 1998:128) that, in the passage from Latin to Romance, the morphosyntax of the emerging languages underwent significant changes in three fundamental areas of the grammar involving: (i) the nominal group; (ii) the verbal group; and (iii) the sentence. At a superficial level, the impact of such changes is most readily observable in: (i) the gradual reduction (e.g., medieval Gallo-Romance, Romanian) and/or eventual loss (e.g., Ibero-Romance, central-southern Italo-Romance) of the Latin morphological case system (see §6.2.2, and Sornicola, this volume, chapter 1: §3.1); (ii) the profusion of auxiliary verb structures (see §3.3.2) to mark such categories as tense (e.g., present perfectivity: Occ. ai dormit ‘I have slept’), aspect (e.g., continuous aspect: Srd. so kredende lit. ‘I am believing’), mood (e.g., epistemic modality: Cat. La pipa deu valer molt ‘the pipe must be worth a lot’) and voice (e.g., passive: Ro. sint invitaţi la un cocteil ‘they are invited to a cocktail party’); and (iii) the gradual shift from an original unmarked (S)OV word order (e.g., Lat. paulus librum scripsit ‘Paul wrote a book’) towards a fixed (S)VO (/V(S)O) order (e.g., Sp. (Pablo) escribio (Pablo) un libro ; see §3.2.2, and Salvi, this volume, chapter 7: §3.4.7).

Lingua italiana in bocca calabra: Italian in Calabria

1.1 Lingua toscana in bocca romana The main title of the present article, Lingua italiana in bocca calabra, is clearly a play on words of the well-known saying Lingua toscana in bocca romana. The latter highlights a long-standing belief, especially among foreign travellers on the Grand Tour, that the Italian spoken in Tuscany cannot, and should not, be considered to be the best form of Italian. One of its earliest attestations is to be found in Alexandre De Rogissart’s Les délices de l’Italie (1709) who, writing in 1701, informed the interested traveller that: