DP-internal Inversion and Negative Polarity: Latin aliquis and its Romance Descendants

Pub Date : 2020-09-01 DOI:10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0005

Chiara Gianollo

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引用次数: 5

Abstract

Abstract I analyze the Romance descendants of Latin aliquis ‘some or other’, which are characterized by a complex pattern of variation in the contemporary Romance languages. I account for this variation in terms of diverging diachronic paths, tracing their determinants back to a process taking place between Classical and late Latin. Classical Latin only used aliquis as an epistemic indefinite, expressing ignorance about the identity of the referent. In late Latin a distributional extension is observed, and aliquis starts to be consistently found as an NPI in negative contexts. This multiplicity of uses is transmitted to medieval Romance and represents the prerequisite for contemporary variation. In their further history, some languages continue only one of the two uses. Other languages maintain both, but the meaning contrast comes to be related to a word-order difference. I analyze this difference as a syntactic DP-internal inversion operation, motivated by focus and connected to polarity sensitivity. Significantly, the diachronic path of the Romance descendants of aliquis contributes to our understanding of general mechanisms of semantic change, since it instantiates a cline of development that can be related to varying (hence, diachronically changing) constraints on quantificational domains.

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dp内部反转和负极性:拉丁别名及其浪漫后裔

摘要:本文分析了拉丁语别名“some or other”的罗曼语后裔，这些后裔在当代罗曼语中具有复杂的变异模式。我根据不同的历时路径来解释这种变化，将它们的决定因素追溯到古典和晚期拉丁语之间发生的过程。古典拉丁语只把aliquis用作一种不确定的认知，表示对指称物身份的无知。在晚期拉丁语中，可以观察到分布扩展，并且aliquis开始在否定上下文中始终被发现为NPI。这种用法的多样性被传递到中世纪的浪漫，并代表了当代变化的先决条件。在其进一步的历史中，一些语言只继续这两种用法中的一种。其他语言两者都保留，但意义对比与词序差异有关。我将这种差异分析为语法dp内部反转操作，由焦点驱动并与极性敏感性相关。值得注意的是，韵语后裔的历时路径有助于我们理解语义变化的一般机制，因为它实例化了一种与定量域的变化(因此，历时变化)约束有关的发展曲线。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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