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Individual Differences in Anaphora Resolution: Language and cognitive effects
Edited by Georgia Fotiadou and Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 18] 2023
► pp. 48–67

Clausal types and syntactic subjects

Introducing and resuming discourse referents in Italian and Greek

| Università per Stranieri di Perugia
In previous work (Di Domenico, 2020), I have analyzed the narrative productions of a group of Italian native speakers, in order to investigate whether the core assumption of the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis, proposed by Carminati (2002) for the resolution of intra-sentential pro in Italian, could be extended to the discourse level despite Carminati’s (2002, p. 306) claim to the contrary. The data suggested that, while pro was overwhelmingly the most attested anaphoric device, Discourse Referents were never introduced pre-verbally; the data, however, also revealed that Discourse Referents introduced as non-subject constituents were restated in subject position for subsequent resumption (through a pseudo-relative, a subject relative or an Accusative + Infinitive clause). This led to the conclusion that the core assumption of the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis could be maintained at the discourse level as well: in Italian pro looks for an antecedent in Spec, IP also inter – sententially. The present work addresses the same question in Greek, which is, as Italian, a null-subject language, and compares the Greek results to the Italian ones of the previous work. The analysis reveals that things work in part differently in the two languages, given that the pre-verbal subject position is frequently employed for the introduction of brand new Discourse Referents in Greek, contrary to Italian. Restatement in subject position, however, modulo some differences concerning the clausal types attested in the two languages, still holds whenever Discourse Referents are introduced as non-subject constituents, suggesting that pro looks for an antecedent in Spec, IP in Greek as well as in Italian.
Keywords: clausal types, narratives, pro, Italian, Greek, Position of Antecedent Hypothesis, discourse referents, introduction, resumption
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Introducing and resuming discourse referents in Italian narratives
    • 2.2On post-verbal subjects of unaccusatives
  • 3.Clausal types in Italian and Greek narratives
  • 4.Introducing and resuming DRs in Greek
  • 5.Extension and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.18.02di
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