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Article published In:
Syntactic Variation and Change
Edited by David Håkansson, Ida Larsson and Erik Magnusson Petzell
[Linguistic Variation 17:1] 2017
► pp. 44–67

How bare are bare quantifiers?

Some notes from diachronic and synchronic variation in Italian

| University of Padova
| University of Padova

In this article we analyze the internal structure of bare universal and negative quantifiers in Italian varieties, taking into consideration both synchronic and diachronic variation. It is proposed that bare quantifiers are not standard QPs with a null DP restrictor, but deficient items where the Q-portion is paired with a classifier expressing the [+/− human]-feature, more specifically a special type of light noun. Items of this type are overtly realized in languages like English and in some Italian varieties. The overt realization of these items appears to be related to the surface position of the QP, as is crucially shown by some varieties that allow both variants. The paper also discusses some cases where these classifiers are still lexically ambiguous between a full noun and a light noun.

Keywords: quantifier, Italian, dialects, morpho-syntax, classifier
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.On the special syntax of bare quantifiers
    • 2.1Modern Italian dialects (I): Bare quantifiers are not bare
    • 2.2 Tutto ‘everything’ in Old Italian
    • 2.3Modern dialects (II): On overt classifiers in Italo-Romance
  • 3.The internal structure of bare quantifiers and their position
  • 4.The case of negative quantifiers in Old Italian
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.17.1.03gar
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All the examples in Old Italian are from: http://​www​.ovi​.cnr​.it​/index​.php​?page​=banchedati

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Garzonio, Jacopo & Cecilia Poletto
2023. Living on the Edge. On Bare and Non-Bare NCIs across Italo-Romance. Languages 8:2 ► pp. 119 ff. DOI logo
Poletto, Cecilia & Cecilia Poletto
2021. Chapter 13. Very …. extracted. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 357], ► pp. 250 ff. DOI logo
Rossi, Silvia & Cecilia Poletto
2022. Bare quantifiers and Verb Second. In Language Change at the Interfaces [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 275], ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo

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