Spatial categories in Aquilan

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to offer an overview of the grammatical and lexical properties of spatial categories in Aquilan, an Italian dialect. The paper shows that spatial prepositions (e.g. a ‘at/to’, ‘nfronte a ‘in front of’), pronouns and indexicals (e.g. pe‘nfronte lit. ‘to in front (of a place)’, loc’arrete ‘there behind’, respectively) share two key properties. The first, a lexical property, is their ability to refer to the location of discourse referent, whence the “spatial” label. The second, a grammatical property, is their similar distribution in sentences and discourse contexts. The paper thoroughly presents these Aquilan data and sketches, as a theoretical analysis that connects these categories into a unified account.