Christina Tortora

Verbs of Inherently Directed Motion Are Compatible with Resultative Phrases

Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) (henceforth L&RH) show that resultative predication serves as a diagnostic for unaccusativity in English: if a resultative can be predicated of the single argument of a monadic verb, that verb is unaccusative. However, they point out that if a monadic verb cannot occur with a resultative, it does not necessarily follow that the verb in question is not unaccusative. For example, they conclude on the basis of (1) *Willa arrived breathless that the subclass of unaccusatives they call verbs of inherently directed motion (henceforth VIDMs) are incompatible with resultatives for independent reasons. In this squib I argue that L&RHs account for the apparent incompatibility of resultatives with VIDMs cannot be maintained and that the ungrammaticality exhibited by (1) is found with all unaccusatives. Thus, it cannot be concluded on the basis of this example that VIDMs are incompatible with resultatives. Given L&RHs explanation for the types of resultatives that can occur with inherently delimited verbs like breath, I argue that VIDMs, like all inherently delimited unaccusatives, are compatible with resultatives

Romance Enclisis, Prepositions, and Aspect

This paper provides evidence that supportsthe view, argued for independently by various authors (including Kayne 1989, 1991; Martins 1994; Uriagereka 1995), that direct object clitics in Romance are independent syntactic elements adjoined to functional heads. In particular, I show that an array of puzzling facts involving potential clitic hosts in a Northern Italian dialect can be understood once we adopt the view that object clitics must be taken to independently occupy distinct functional heads (in spite of phonological indications to the contrary). To show this, I establish that certain adverbs in this language occupy fixed positions within the clause. Once these positions are identified, I use them as probes to understand the position of the clitic. This paper also explores an independent consequence of this explanation of clitic placement: the position of argument prepositions with respect to the fixed object clitic indicates that there is an ‘Aspectual Phrase’ in the clauses functional structure. I show that argument prepositionsmove from their base positions within VP to a functional projection which encodes the semantics of telicity, in contrast with non-argument prepositions (location adverbials), which do not exhibit such movement.

Heritage nation vs heritage language: Towards a more nuanced rhetoric of ‘heritage’ in Italian language pedagogy:

Language programs in the US frequently invoke the notion of heritage in order to spark student interest in language learning. The idea is that acquisition of a particular language can connect a student to their past in ways that can empower them and give them a richer appreciation of their own ethnic background. This article addresses this ‘appeal to heritage’ approach to the promotion of language learning, in relation to Italian. I discuss the disconnect between the language of the classroom on the one hand and true Italian-American linguistic heritage on the other. My purpose is to facilitate an informed discussion of linguistic reality, which is that many members of the Italian diaspora descend from ancestors who were monolingual dialettofoni. I argue that the facts of linguistic diversity in Italy and dialect heritage in the US should be central to any discourse which aims to promote the learning of Italian as a gateway to our students’ pasts. While there is no question that knowledge of Standard Italian gives access to Italy, which in turn can give access to the Italian-American student’s heritage culture(s), it is necessary to formulate a more precise understanding of the link between ‘knowledge of Italian’ on the one hand, and ‘Italian heritage’ on the other – a link which is much less direct than is often suggested.

Evidence for Generalized Verbal Periphrasis in English

It is commonly assumed that the two simple tenses of English (We love/loved the wine) do not involve verbal periphrasis. Instead, I consider evidence which supports an analysis of the English simple present and past tenses as compound tenses. For non-vernacular Englishes, the auxiliary is covert; however, there are numerous cases of variably overt auxiliaries in different vernacular English constructions yielding simple present and simple past interpretations which support the proposal. The conclusion that all English tenses (present, past, perfect) are compound entails two concomitant hypotheses: (i) English verb forms traditionally characterized as present and past tense verbs are non-finite (reviving an idea put forward by Sola 1996), and (ii) meaning differences between simple past and the perfect tenses does not derive from the absence vs. presence of an auxiliary. Thus, the difference in interpretation between we loved that wine (past) and we’ve always loved that wine (present perfect) cannot find its source in the absence versus presence of have, which itself does not contribute to the meaning difference. Rather, a la Iatridou et al. (2001), I develop the idea that interpretive differences must be found in the different functional/adverbial projections of the matrix and embedded clauses.