The articles collected in this volume bear witness to the important role played by studies on language variation, specifically on Romance microvariation, in the development of formal approaches to language. Leonardo M. Savoia is a central figure in this endeavor, in the twin fields of phonology and morphosyntax. In this introductory chapter, I will briefly put research into (micro)variation in Romance and other language families in the context of the recent theoretical debate in generative grammar. Despite Savoia’s unrivalled expertise in field work and the prodigious number of data we owe to him, especially on Italian and Albanian varieties, it is only within a theoretical setting that his work is truly appreciated. I will conclude each section by illustrating how the themes explored therein resonate in the several contributions to the volume.
In many Northern Italian varieties the plural inflection ‑i has a restricted distribution, targeting feminine class nouns, determiners and adjectives. The ‑i morpheme also occurs with clitic pronouns, both subjects and objects. The crucial point we address is the relation between the plural specialized morpheme ‑i and its distribution among noun classes. We account for the distribution of the inflection ‑i on the basis of a theoretical treatment of the internal structure of the noun, along the lines of Manzini and Savoia (2017a, b).
A parallel is highlighted between the linguistic behavior of young Italian-speaking children as emerged in recent experimental work (Belletti and Manetti 2017) with comparative data from other Romance languages such as Balearic Catalan and (previous stages of) Spanish in the domain of a-Topics. A possible path from a-Topics to DOM is drawn, building on previous proposals in Belletti (2017a). a-Marking of topics concerns direct object DPs. A proposal is sketched out as to why subject DPs could not be a-marked when they are also topics in terms of a possibly conflicting requirement arising from the simultaneous satisfaction of both the Topic criterion with a-marking and the Subject criterion (in the sense of Rizzi 2006).
Here certain properties of Italian infinitival relatives will be discussed which to our knowledge have not been addressed in previous work on this topic (Napoli 1976; Cinque 1988: § 1.1.5; Bianchi 1991, 2007). In particular, we will point out a distinction between two ‘da + infinitive’ relative constructions and a difference between da infinitival relatives and infinitival relatives introduced by relative pronouns; furthermore, we will illustrate the bounded vs unbounded nature of relativization under restructuring, and the properties of restrictive vs non-restrictive infinitival relatives.
The main aim of this work is to further speculate on the many syntactic similarities, already discussed in previous work, which may be observed in Bantu and Romance languages. In particular, this work analyses the expression of negation in Bantu, a phenomenon which involves different elements and multiple positions. Crucially, Bantu negation is generally encoded in a specialized prefix, which shows up at the left edge of the complex verbal form; however, negation may also interfere either with tense feature – at least in languages, like Swahili, which exhibit morphologically different tense/aspect infixes in affirmative and negative clauses – or with modality, encoded in the final inflection. This recalls the situation observed also in Romance varieties and especially in Northern Italian dialects.
In the theory of agreement developed by Chomsky (2000, 2001) φ features are undifferentiated, they are organized in a bundle of features, despite the intrinsically different information that each of them carries. However, while person is found to have an autonomous status in many psycholinguistic studies, number and gender show contrasting results: some studies show a crucial difference in the processing of number and gender, others, mainly ERP, do not. We will review the different psycholinguistic findings and we will propose that number and gender simply denote different nominal classes. The difference found in some experiments for number and gender maybe linked to when the feature is made available in the comprehension of the sentence (early/late cues).
Manzini and Savoia (2005, 2017) argue that morphophonology is involved in enclisis/proclisis alternations only in so far as it externalizes the syntactico-semantic category of non-veridicality, as outlined here in Section 1. In Section 2 we review typological literature reporting that the irrealis category governs the alternation between different pronominal series cross-linguistically. This evidence potentially fulfills a prediction issuing from the treatment of Romance. What is more, comparison between treatments of Romance microvariation and of typological macrovariation reveals a propensity to treat the former in terms of morphophonological organization and the latter in terms of conceptual systems. If Manzini and Savoia are correct, efforts at defining opposed notions of macro‑ and micro-parametrization are not warranted by the evidence (Section 3).
This paper focuses on the syntax of clefts in the Lombard dialect of Comun Nuovo (Bergamo). In this dialect, clefts are highly constrained (in particular, they are ungrammatical in questions) and, in the contexts where clefts and pseudo-clefts alternate, the distinction between the two is often blurred. We argue that Comunuovese clefts are better analysed as concealed pseudo-clefts (Paul 2001 a.o.).
In this work we consider two opposite sorts of Romance varieties with respect to the negative marker, i.e. an Occitan variety where the preverbal negative marker alone is so much reduced that it can nowadays only occur in some specific syntactic contexts and two Venetan varieties where the preverbal negative marker is so widespread that it even displays strict negative concord. We will show that despite being so different, both types of dialects are sensitive to the modal environment and that the presence of the preverbal negative marker is tied to a subset of non-veridical contexts, i.e. those that contain a [−realis] verbal form.
The cartographic analysis of the left periphery leads to the identification of invariant and variable properties in the syntactic expression of scope-discourse configurations, such as topic-comment and focus-presupposition. One notable property is that languages typically permit a unique focus in the left periphery of a clause, whereas left-peripheral topics may proliferate in many languages. A comparative analysis of Italian and Gungbe reveals that Italian disallows distinct LP foci also in distinct clauses of complex sentences, an option which is permitted in Gungbe. The proposal developed in this paper capitalizes on computational mechanisms applying at the interfaces with sound and meaning to capture the invariant core and the variability in these left-peripheral properties across languages.
The first aim of this squib is to show that, under the correct syntactic configuration, volere ‘want’ can be embedded in Italian faire-infinitives (FI), contrary to previous claims. Secondly, we show that want-FIs exhibit peculiar properties: (i) they disallow a full DP causee; (ii) they permit intermediate cliticisation onto volere; (iii) they allow optional splitting of clitic clusters; and (iv) they marginally permit an accusative causee in transitive contexts where the object is a clitic. We attribute these effects to defective intervention which bans a full DP causee and requires the creation of a biclausal ECM construction, where accusative is exceptionally licensed, and where the selection of a silent OBTAIN by ‘want’ creates an additional clitic position.
In this paper, I will analyse Albanian structures containing the verb duket ‘seem’. I will show that the raising analysis given for English cannot be extended to Albanian since, in English, raising is a last resort strategy that moves a subject from an infinitive clause to a matrix finite one, in order to be Case-marked. In Albanian, the verb duket selects a finite clause as its complement, so, NP-movement from the embedded clause to the matrix one is not obligatory, given that the NP originates in a position where Case is assigned/checked. Thus, in Albanian, the optional movement of the NP subject will be analysed both as Topicalization and sideward movement.
Sardinian displays stress shifts under cliticisation with imperative and gerund verb forms. Stress shift is related to the type and number of clitics associated to the host. Across the range of dialectal variation, three different stress shift patterns are attested. We will argue that Sardinian data supports the approach whereby stress shift variation cannot be regarded either as the result of purely prosodic rules or as the consequence of different syntactic feature-checking properties of the clause. The analysis here proposed accounts for stress placement as an allomorphy that is partly determined by phonological conditions.
Syncope and epenthesis have been treated as two closely related phenomena in traditional accounts: what syncope destroys, epenthesis restores. In this paper we present some cases of vowel epenthesis in the verbal domain in some Northern Emilian varieties where both syncope and epenthesis are rather restricted. It will be shown that apparently free alternations in some arhizotonic forms, like lizì vs. alzì ‘you.pl read’, are to be considered as the result of two different grammars. Only in one of these there is allomorphy of verb stems triggered by the interaction of morphosyntactic configurations, and morphophonological and phonotactic constraints.
Overabundance is defined as the situation in which more than one inflected form is available to realize a single cell of an inflectional paradigm (Thornton 2011, 2012). Hungarian pronominal paradigms host several cases of overabundance in the accusative forms. Quantitative data from both diachronic and synchronic corpora are presented, showing that 1/2/3sg.acc forms have an unbalanced distribution while 1pl.acc and 2pl.acc forms have a very balanced distribution, close to a 1:1 ratio between the two competing forms. One of the factors mentioned in the literature as favoring one of the two 1pl.acc and 2pl.acc forms, i.e., usage in emphatic / focus position, is illustrated and briefly discussed on the basis of corpus data.
This paper deals with some Logudorese dialects of Northern Sardinia, whose nominal and pronominal morphology has been variously reshaped due to contact with Gallurese/Sassarese. While many of the data discussed here were addressed in the previously available literature, we draw on first-hand fieldwork data to show that further simplification in the system of personal pronouns has taken place (Sènnori) or is presently ongoing (Luras), resulting in an overall trend towards loss of marking of the gender contrast, everywhere in the plural, at times also in the singular. In particular in the case of Luras, we show that this rearrangement is taking place through a kaleidoscope of subtly differing individual variants.
This article illustrates and analyses the intricate phenomenon of OCL-for-SCL, found in certain varieties of Franco-Provençal Valdôtain and Piedmontese. This phenomenon, which at first sight appears highly unusual, reflects operations of morphophonological realisation of the kind developed in the context of the theory of Distributed Morphology such as fission and fusion, amply attested elsewhere in the world’s languages. In a further section, the contexts for enclisis to past participles are discussed. Following Roberts (2016), this leads to the proposal of the implicational scale ‘complement to restructuring verb > complement to auxiliary > complement to causative’. This can be described this in terms of degrees of ‘transparency’ which in turn may translate into structural ‘size’.
The aim of this contribution is to honor Leonardo Savoia with some reflections concerning a topic which has received little attention until recent years: the case of Vocatives. If according to D’Alessandro & Van Oostendorp (2016: 78) Vocatives are perfectly regular, typological data show on the other hand that in many languages this is not the case. More specifically, we present and discuss the question of the shape of the Vocatives found in Logudorese Sardinian. We shall bring new data that confirm the view expressed among others in the seminal work of Uspensky & Zhivov (1977) and Floricic (2002, 2011), according to which Vocatives are in many respects exceptional.
The present article considers the syntactic constraints operative on the distribution of a phonological fortition process, raddoppiamento fonosintattico ‘phonosyntactic doubling’, in the Calabrian dialect of Cosenza. It is shown that the relevant locality restrictions are best understood, not in terms of the three core structural configurations Spec-Head, Head-Head and Head-Comp, but in terms of phasal domains, highlighting how different phonological realizations represent the spell-out of deep syntactic differences mapped at the syntax-phonology interface. At the same time, the theoretical assumptions assumed here provide us with the key to understanding some intriguing empirical generalizations about the distribution of Cosentino RF which, in turn, throw new light on some current theoretical assumptions about clause structure and the nature of phases.
Metaphony in Romance poses a well-known problem for Element Theory, as it seems to involve lowering. [D’Alessandro and van Oostendorp (2016)] propose to solve this by assuming some suffixes are ‘ |A| Eaters’, absorbing the |A| element from the stem vowel without getting phonetically realized themselves. This paper points to some problems with this analysis, and shows that Magnetic Grammar, a framework in which all linguistic variation is encoded in features, might help to solve them.
Throughout different theoretical models it is generally agreed that syllable structure is only determined by the melodic composition of segments and predictions are made concerning the syllabification of clusters on the basis of their segmental content. This contribution draws attention on empirical data showing that the predictions are not always verified, arguing in favour of a refinement of the theoretical tools proposed so far to derive cluster syllabification.
This contribution presents a case study in the intricate diachronic and synchronic interrelations between languages in the Italian and Balkan linguistic spaces. Words related to Latin lucanica (‘type of sausage’) are investigated and hypotheses on their pattern of diffusion are surveyed and discussed. Among other points, the contribution touches on the etymology of lucanica itself, the intermediation role of Byzantine Greek, the multiple outcomes of the word in the Romanian group, its present-day distribution in Italo-Romance and Arbëresh dialects.
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the studies on political language produced between 1960 and 1980. This is a very important period for research in this area, as it marks a significant development of lexical-semantic analysis concerning linguistic corpora, which are essential to the history of Europe. The speeches by the protagonists of the French Revolution, the totalitarian languages, the messages by last century parties and leaders, as well as the dictionaries and different political lexicon adopted by East and West Germany are notably the favoured subjects for semantic in-depth analysis, to understand the significant connotations and meaning effects.
Dialectal variation has been constanly at the core of linguistic investigation. On the base of the few neurophysiological studies that explored dialectal data, this article examines if and how dialectal variation may contribute to the advancing of the neurobiology of language. Evidence suggest that the neural investigation of allophonic variation generated by phonological rules is very useful for the progress of the neurobiology of language. Also, all kinds of parametric variations characterizing dialects are well suited to this aim. Finally, I outline some general and detailed questions that need to be addressed making use of a new methodology: the oscillatory rhythms approach.
This paper deals with the special status of morphological features in a series of contexts that are crucial for the understanding of the architecture of human grammar: language pathology and impairment, L1/L2 acquisition, language evolution, language contact. The critical review of data referring to different domains and to different languages enlightens the special vulnerability of morphology. In language impairments, as well as in communicative exchanges occurring in multilingual contexts, morphological categories are not perfectly acquired. Empirical evidence relative to atypical contexts shows a peculiar asymmetry in the structure of language: alongside early development and strength of lexicon and phonology, late appearance and vulnerability of morphology. However, the weakness of morphology does not imply a minor role of this component into the grammar.
Çabej (1969) originally posited a small number of Albanian-Celtic-Germanic isoglosses. Apart from a more detailed discussion of besa and njerí, we highlight in greater depth the areal diffusion of the I-E diffusion of Albanoid bërrakë, e blertë, brī and dritë. We add in-depth observations on the Celto-Albanian binomial ardracht (Old Irish) – dritë (Albanoid), where the Celtic terms involved are traceable to Gaulish dercos and uodercos of texts and inscriptions. Such isoglosses are developed here and tend to substantiate Hamp’s view that the Albanoid Urheimat was originally Central-North Europe rather than its present day Mediterranean Heimat.
The articles collected in this volume bear witness to the important role played by studies on language variation, specifically on Romance microvariation, in the development of formal approaches to language. Leonardo M. Savoia is a central figure in this endeavor, in the twin fields of phonology and morphosyntax. In this introductory chapter, I will briefly put research into (micro)variation in Romance and other language families in the context of the recent theoretical debate in generative grammar. Despite Savoia’s unrivalled expertise in field work and the prodigious number of data we owe to him, especially on Italian and Albanian varieties, it is only within a theoretical setting that his work is truly appreciated. I will conclude each section by illustrating how the themes explored therein resonate in the several contributions to the volume.
In many Northern Italian varieties the plural inflection ‑i has a restricted distribution, targeting feminine class nouns, determiners and adjectives. The ‑i morpheme also occurs with clitic pronouns, both subjects and objects. The crucial point we address is the relation between the plural specialized morpheme ‑i and its distribution among noun classes. We account for the distribution of the inflection ‑i on the basis of a theoretical treatment of the internal structure of the noun, along the lines of Manzini and Savoia (2017a, b).
A parallel is highlighted between the linguistic behavior of young Italian-speaking children as emerged in recent experimental work (Belletti and Manetti 2017) with comparative data from other Romance languages such as Balearic Catalan and (previous stages of) Spanish in the domain of a-Topics. A possible path from a-Topics to DOM is drawn, building on previous proposals in Belletti (2017a). a-Marking of topics concerns direct object DPs. A proposal is sketched out as to why subject DPs could not be a-marked when they are also topics in terms of a possibly conflicting requirement arising from the simultaneous satisfaction of both the Topic criterion with a-marking and the Subject criterion (in the sense of Rizzi 2006).
Here certain properties of Italian infinitival relatives will be discussed which to our knowledge have not been addressed in previous work on this topic (Napoli 1976; Cinque 1988: § 1.1.5; Bianchi 1991, 2007). In particular, we will point out a distinction between two ‘da + infinitive’ relative constructions and a difference between da infinitival relatives and infinitival relatives introduced by relative pronouns; furthermore, we will illustrate the bounded vs unbounded nature of relativization under restructuring, and the properties of restrictive vs non-restrictive infinitival relatives.
The main aim of this work is to further speculate on the many syntactic similarities, already discussed in previous work, which may be observed in Bantu and Romance languages. In particular, this work analyses the expression of negation in Bantu, a phenomenon which involves different elements and multiple positions. Crucially, Bantu negation is generally encoded in a specialized prefix, which shows up at the left edge of the complex verbal form; however, negation may also interfere either with tense feature – at least in languages, like Swahili, which exhibit morphologically different tense/aspect infixes in affirmative and negative clauses – or with modality, encoded in the final inflection. This recalls the situation observed also in Romance varieties and especially in Northern Italian dialects.
In the theory of agreement developed by Chomsky (2000, 2001) φ features are undifferentiated, they are organized in a bundle of features, despite the intrinsically different information that each of them carries. However, while person is found to have an autonomous status in many psycholinguistic studies, number and gender show contrasting results: some studies show a crucial difference in the processing of number and gender, others, mainly ERP, do not. We will review the different psycholinguistic findings and we will propose that number and gender simply denote different nominal classes. The difference found in some experiments for number and gender maybe linked to when the feature is made available in the comprehension of the sentence (early/late cues).
Manzini and Savoia (2005, 2017) argue that morphophonology is involved in enclisis/proclisis alternations only in so far as it externalizes the syntactico-semantic category of non-veridicality, as outlined here in Section 1. In Section 2 we review typological literature reporting that the irrealis category governs the alternation between different pronominal series cross-linguistically. This evidence potentially fulfills a prediction issuing from the treatment of Romance. What is more, comparison between treatments of Romance microvariation and of typological macrovariation reveals a propensity to treat the former in terms of morphophonological organization and the latter in terms of conceptual systems. If Manzini and Savoia are correct, efforts at defining opposed notions of macro‑ and micro-parametrization are not warranted by the evidence (Section 3).
This paper focuses on the syntax of clefts in the Lombard dialect of Comun Nuovo (Bergamo). In this dialect, clefts are highly constrained (in particular, they are ungrammatical in questions) and, in the contexts where clefts and pseudo-clefts alternate, the distinction between the two is often blurred. We argue that Comunuovese clefts are better analysed as concealed pseudo-clefts (Paul 2001 a.o.).
In this work we consider two opposite sorts of Romance varieties with respect to the negative marker, i.e. an Occitan variety where the preverbal negative marker alone is so much reduced that it can nowadays only occur in some specific syntactic contexts and two Venetan varieties where the preverbal negative marker is so widespread that it even displays strict negative concord. We will show that despite being so different, both types of dialects are sensitive to the modal environment and that the presence of the preverbal negative marker is tied to a subset of non-veridical contexts, i.e. those that contain a [−realis] verbal form.
The cartographic analysis of the left periphery leads to the identification of invariant and variable properties in the syntactic expression of scope-discourse configurations, such as topic-comment and focus-presupposition. One notable property is that languages typically permit a unique focus in the left periphery of a clause, whereas left-peripheral topics may proliferate in many languages. A comparative analysis of Italian and Gungbe reveals that Italian disallows distinct LP foci also in distinct clauses of complex sentences, an option which is permitted in Gungbe. The proposal developed in this paper capitalizes on computational mechanisms applying at the interfaces with sound and meaning to capture the invariant core and the variability in these left-peripheral properties across languages.
The first aim of this squib is to show that, under the correct syntactic configuration, volere ‘want’ can be embedded in Italian faire-infinitives (FI), contrary to previous claims. Secondly, we show that want-FIs exhibit peculiar properties: (i) they disallow a full DP causee; (ii) they permit intermediate cliticisation onto volere; (iii) they allow optional splitting of clitic clusters; and (iv) they marginally permit an accusative causee in transitive contexts where the object is a clitic. We attribute these effects to defective intervention which bans a full DP causee and requires the creation of a biclausal ECM construction, where accusative is exceptionally licensed, and where the selection of a silent OBTAIN by ‘want’ creates an additional clitic position.
In this paper, I will analyse Albanian structures containing the verb duket ‘seem’. I will show that the raising analysis given for English cannot be extended to Albanian since, in English, raising is a last resort strategy that moves a subject from an infinitive clause to a matrix finite one, in order to be Case-marked. In Albanian, the verb duket selects a finite clause as its complement, so, NP-movement from the embedded clause to the matrix one is not obligatory, given that the NP originates in a position where Case is assigned/checked. Thus, in Albanian, the optional movement of the NP subject will be analysed both as Topicalization and sideward movement.
Sardinian displays stress shifts under cliticisation with imperative and gerund verb forms. Stress shift is related to the type and number of clitics associated to the host. Across the range of dialectal variation, three different stress shift patterns are attested. We will argue that Sardinian data supports the approach whereby stress shift variation cannot be regarded either as the result of purely prosodic rules or as the consequence of different syntactic feature-checking properties of the clause. The analysis here proposed accounts for stress placement as an allomorphy that is partly determined by phonological conditions.
Syncope and epenthesis have been treated as two closely related phenomena in traditional accounts: what syncope destroys, epenthesis restores. In this paper we present some cases of vowel epenthesis in the verbal domain in some Northern Emilian varieties where both syncope and epenthesis are rather restricted. It will be shown that apparently free alternations in some arhizotonic forms, like lizì vs. alzì ‘you.pl read’, are to be considered as the result of two different grammars. Only in one of these there is allomorphy of verb stems triggered by the interaction of morphosyntactic configurations, and morphophonological and phonotactic constraints.
Overabundance is defined as the situation in which more than one inflected form is available to realize a single cell of an inflectional paradigm (Thornton 2011, 2012). Hungarian pronominal paradigms host several cases of overabundance in the accusative forms. Quantitative data from both diachronic and synchronic corpora are presented, showing that 1/2/3sg.acc forms have an unbalanced distribution while 1pl.acc and 2pl.acc forms have a very balanced distribution, close to a 1:1 ratio between the two competing forms. One of the factors mentioned in the literature as favoring one of the two 1pl.acc and 2pl.acc forms, i.e., usage in emphatic / focus position, is illustrated and briefly discussed on the basis of corpus data.
This paper deals with some Logudorese dialects of Northern Sardinia, whose nominal and pronominal morphology has been variously reshaped due to contact with Gallurese/Sassarese. While many of the data discussed here were addressed in the previously available literature, we draw on first-hand fieldwork data to show that further simplification in the system of personal pronouns has taken place (Sènnori) or is presently ongoing (Luras), resulting in an overall trend towards loss of marking of the gender contrast, everywhere in the plural, at times also in the singular. In particular in the case of Luras, we show that this rearrangement is taking place through a kaleidoscope of subtly differing individual variants.
This article illustrates and analyses the intricate phenomenon of OCL-for-SCL, found in certain varieties of Franco-Provençal Valdôtain and Piedmontese. This phenomenon, which at first sight appears highly unusual, reflects operations of morphophonological realisation of the kind developed in the context of the theory of Distributed Morphology such as fission and fusion, amply attested elsewhere in the world’s languages. In a further section, the contexts for enclisis to past participles are discussed. Following Roberts (2016), this leads to the proposal of the implicational scale ‘complement to restructuring verb > complement to auxiliary > complement to causative’. This can be described this in terms of degrees of ‘transparency’ which in turn may translate into structural ‘size’.
The aim of this contribution is to honor Leonardo Savoia with some reflections concerning a topic which has received little attention until recent years: the case of Vocatives. If according to D’Alessandro & Van Oostendorp (2016: 78) Vocatives are perfectly regular, typological data show on the other hand that in many languages this is not the case. More specifically, we present and discuss the question of the shape of the Vocatives found in Logudorese Sardinian. We shall bring new data that confirm the view expressed among others in the seminal work of Uspensky & Zhivov (1977) and Floricic (2002, 2011), according to which Vocatives are in many respects exceptional.
The present article considers the syntactic constraints operative on the distribution of a phonological fortition process, raddoppiamento fonosintattico ‘phonosyntactic doubling’, in the Calabrian dialect of Cosenza. It is shown that the relevant locality restrictions are best understood, not in terms of the three core structural configurations Spec-Head, Head-Head and Head-Comp, but in terms of phasal domains, highlighting how different phonological realizations represent the spell-out of deep syntactic differences mapped at the syntax-phonology interface. At the same time, the theoretical assumptions assumed here provide us with the key to understanding some intriguing empirical generalizations about the distribution of Cosentino RF which, in turn, throw new light on some current theoretical assumptions about clause structure and the nature of phases.
Metaphony in Romance poses a well-known problem for Element Theory, as it seems to involve lowering. [D’Alessandro and van Oostendorp (2016)] propose to solve this by assuming some suffixes are ‘ |A| Eaters’, absorbing the |A| element from the stem vowel without getting phonetically realized themselves. This paper points to some problems with this analysis, and shows that Magnetic Grammar, a framework in which all linguistic variation is encoded in features, might help to solve them.
Throughout different theoretical models it is generally agreed that syllable structure is only determined by the melodic composition of segments and predictions are made concerning the syllabification of clusters on the basis of their segmental content. This contribution draws attention on empirical data showing that the predictions are not always verified, arguing in favour of a refinement of the theoretical tools proposed so far to derive cluster syllabification.
This contribution presents a case study in the intricate diachronic and synchronic interrelations between languages in the Italian and Balkan linguistic spaces. Words related to Latin lucanica (‘type of sausage’) are investigated and hypotheses on their pattern of diffusion are surveyed and discussed. Among other points, the contribution touches on the etymology of lucanica itself, the intermediation role of Byzantine Greek, the multiple outcomes of the word in the Romanian group, its present-day distribution in Italo-Romance and Arbëresh dialects.
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the studies on political language produced between 1960 and 1980. This is a very important period for research in this area, as it marks a significant development of lexical-semantic analysis concerning linguistic corpora, which are essential to the history of Europe. The speeches by the protagonists of the French Revolution, the totalitarian languages, the messages by last century parties and leaders, as well as the dictionaries and different political lexicon adopted by East and West Germany are notably the favoured subjects for semantic in-depth analysis, to understand the significant connotations and meaning effects.
Dialectal variation has been constanly at the core of linguistic investigation. On the base of the few neurophysiological studies that explored dialectal data, this article examines if and how dialectal variation may contribute to the advancing of the neurobiology of language. Evidence suggest that the neural investigation of allophonic variation generated by phonological rules is very useful for the progress of the neurobiology of language. Also, all kinds of parametric variations characterizing dialects are well suited to this aim. Finally, I outline some general and detailed questions that need to be addressed making use of a new methodology: the oscillatory rhythms approach.
This paper deals with the special status of morphological features in a series of contexts that are crucial for the understanding of the architecture of human grammar: language pathology and impairment, L1/L2 acquisition, language evolution, language contact. The critical review of data referring to different domains and to different languages enlightens the special vulnerability of morphology. In language impairments, as well as in communicative exchanges occurring in multilingual contexts, morphological categories are not perfectly acquired. Empirical evidence relative to atypical contexts shows a peculiar asymmetry in the structure of language: alongside early development and strength of lexicon and phonology, late appearance and vulnerability of morphology. However, the weakness of morphology does not imply a minor role of this component into the grammar.
Çabej (1969) originally posited a small number of Albanian-Celtic-Germanic isoglosses. Apart from a more detailed discussion of besa and njerí, we highlight in greater depth the areal diffusion of the I-E diffusion of Albanoid bërrakë, e blertë, brī and dritë. We add in-depth observations on the Celto-Albanian binomial ardracht (Old Irish) – dritë (Albanoid), where the Celtic terms involved are traceable to Gaulish dercos and uodercos of texts and inscriptions. Such isoglosses are developed here and tend to substantiate Hamp’s view that the Albanoid Urheimat was originally Central-North Europe rather than its present day Mediterranean Heimat.