ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0008
Aquiles Tescari Neto
{"title":"On the Raising of the Finite Main Verb in Angolan Portuguese and in Mozambican Portuguese: Cartographic Hierarchies, Microvariation and the Use of Adverbs as Diagnostics for Movement","authors":"Aquiles Tescari Neto","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper revisits the issue of verb raising in two closely related languages, namely Angolan Portuguese (AP) and Mozambican Portuguese (MP). Cinque’s (cartographic) hierarchy of adverbs is used to examine microvariation in these two varieties of Portuguese. The empirical data, gathered through experiments on acceptability rating tasks (to detect the position of the V(erb) in relation to adverbs) and cloze tests (to diagnose the adverbial classes which can be recovered by the elliptical VP), have been collected among university students in Luanda and Maputo, the capitals of Angola and Mozambique, respectively. The cutting points within the functional hierarchy where the V goes, be it mandatorily or optionally, are different in the two languages. In AP, the verb must raise past the frustrative aspect adverb (em vão/à toa ‘in vain’), while in MP the verb must raise to the left of the singular completive adverb (tudo ‘everything’). The main verb cannot raise past the AspTerminative adverb (já não/não mais ‘no longer’) in MP. In AP, it can optionally raise over the highest projection in the inflectional domain. Such a difference may explain the recovery of high adverbs in VP-ellipsis structures, only possible in AP. The corollary of the inter-linguistic study developed for Comparative Syntax is the adequacy of the cartographic démarche when it comes to establishment of strict boundaries in the study of microvariation among closely related grammars.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72476828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0007
Giuseppe Samo
{"title":"Criterial V2: ModP as a Locus of Microvariation in Swiss Romansh Varieties","authors":"Giuseppe Samo","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, we explore how cartographic maps interact with a concept of parameters in terms of syntactic operations triggered by morphosyntactic features in the spirit of Rizzi (2017. On the format and locus of parameters: The role of morphosyntactic features. Linguistic Analysis 41. 159–191). Adopting the guidelines of a criterial approach to verb second, in which the inflected verb creates a Spec-Head configuration (verb adjacency) with the highest activated criterial head in the syntactic architecture, we discuss microparametric variation among Swiss Romansh varieties concerning the activation of ModP, a dedicated criterial position for “highlighted” adverbials (Rizzi 2004. Locality and left periphery. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond [the Cartography of syntactic structures], Vol. 3, 223–251. Oxford: Oxford University Press) within the left periphery of the clause.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89512131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0009
S. Wolfe
{"title":"Microvariation and Change in the Romance Left Periphery","authors":"S. Wolfe","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Despite the vast literature which has accrued on the fine structure of the Romance left periphery, there exists no diachronic account of the emergence of the considerable microvariation between Romance varieties today. Focussing in particular on the syntax of French and Venetan varieties, this article suggests that certain northern Romance varieties have diverged maximally from an Early Medieval Romance norm in which each left-peripheral Head attracts a wide variety of suitable Goals for movement, unlike the ‘innovative’ Romance grammars which emerge in the post-medieval period where the suitable class of Goals becomes restricted along categorial or information-structural grounds. The account predicts that the most ‘conservative’ Modern Romance grammars allow widespread argument fronting via movement, whereas their most ‘innovative’ counterparts show heavy restrictions on such operations.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86635284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0006
Silvio Cruschina, V. Bianchi
{"title":"The Syntactic Encoding of Conventional Implicatures in Sicilian Polar Questions","authors":"Silvio Cruschina, V. Bianchi","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper describes and analyses two discourse particles that are found in polar questions and in some declarative structures in central Sicilian. The analysis adopts an interface approach, relying on the cartographic framework. It is proposed that each particle conveys in all its uses one and the same conventional implicature, relating to the epistemic state of one of the discourse participants. The interaction of the two particles with left-peripheral elements, in particular topics, vocatives, fronted foci, and speaker-oriented adverbs, supports the view that the speaker, the hearer, and the commitment anchor are syntactically represented in sentence structure.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87504797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0002
L. Rizzi, Giuseppe Samo
{"title":"Introduction: On the Role of Romance in Cartographic Studies","authors":"L. Rizzi, Giuseppe Samo","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Cartographic studies have been pursued for over a quarter of a century, offering new insights on the nature and fine details of syntactic structures. The study of Romance languages and dialects has played a critical role in these advances. The following introductory remarks illustrate the general lines of this trend, without attempting at an exhaustive review.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87957125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0003
A. Belletti
{"title":"a-Topics in Italian/Romance and the Cartography of Children’s Inventions","authors":"A. Belletti","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper has a specific and focused aim: to unveil a possible route to DOM, the crosslinguistically widely attested phenomenon whereby direct objects are introduced by a preposition, with interpretive constraints. The prepositional marker is ‘a’ in Italian and in (the majority of) Romance. The investigation is based on both comparative data from Romance and on some relevant experimental results from the acquisition of Italian involving a-Topics. The insights that syntactic cartography may provide on the characterization of such route is the leading note of the investigation: a-marking starts out on direct objects topics, only occurring when the (animate) direct object is preposed in the left periphery of the clause; then a-marking involves clause internal direct object topics in the vP-periphery; and finally a-marking is Case related in the small ‘v’ spine; the latter, is also implicated in causatives and in constructions involving benefactive arguments. The acquisition results reviewed indicate the use of left peripheral a-Topics in children’s elicited productions in Italian, which are not attested in the target language, thus illustrating a cartographically defined space of children’s grammatical creativity.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78366300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0004
Frédérique Berthelot
{"title":"Long Subject Questions in French: An Insight into the Left Periphery of Selected CPs","authors":"Frédérique Berthelot","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article presents experimental data assessing the acceptability status of long subject questions (LSQs) in French. It shows that their suboptimal score does not reflect dialect variation and it fails to detect a change in progress. An analysis, developing further the rescuing strategy proposed in Rizzi and Shlonsky's freezing account, is presented. The crux of the proposal is that a Case mismatch obtains within the embedded complementizer, which is shown to be necessarily syncretic in LSQs. The full acceptability of embedded subject questions is then discussed and accounted for within this framework.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83452023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2022-0005
G. Cinque
{"title":"On Two Sub-projections of the Nominal Extended Projection: Some Romance Evidence","authors":"G. Cinque","doi":"10.1515/probus-2022-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2022-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract If cross-linguistic word order variation is a function of the movement of the head of each (sub)projection of an extended projection (in one of the possible ways movement can take place: with or without pied piping) there will be novel evidence for the correct constituencies of the clause and its major phrases. Here I will try to illustrate this by looking at two specific sub-projections of the nominal extended projection in a number of Romance languages: the sub-projection of locative adverbs and elevation and exteriority/interiority particles, and the sub-projection containing ‘other’, and ordinal and cardinal numerals.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73064952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-02-02DOI: 10.1515/PRBS-2021-0010
Kim A. Groothuis
{"title":"Non-finite Verb Movement in Romance","authors":"Kim A. Groothuis","doi":"10.1515/PRBS-2021-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/PRBS-2021-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 365–424, it is well known that Romance finite verbs move into the I-domain. However, the relationship between finiteness and verb movement has not yet been investigated in detail. The aim of the present study is to trace and analyse verb movement in various types of non-finite and semi-finite clauses in Romance, including infinitives with specified subjects, inflected infinitives, bare infinitival clauses, Aux-to-Comp (cf. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris), past participial clauses, and gerunds. It is shown that all types of Romance non-finite verbs move high, with the exception of French absolute participles and French infinitives. The picture of non-finite movement is thus more uniform than that of finite verb movement (cf. Schifano, Norma. 2018. Verb movement in Romance. A comparative study. Oxford: Oxford University Press). A unified account is proposed: non-finite verbs all need to be anchored to the speech act through a higher clause, which requires them to be in a local relation with the anchoring head Fin (cf. Groothuis, Kim A. 2020. Reflexes of finiteness in Romance. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Unpublished PhD thesis).","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73119588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2022-02-02DOI: 10.1515/probus-2021-0010
Kim A. Groothuis
{"title":"Non-finite Verb Movement in Romance","authors":"Kim A. Groothuis","doi":"10.1515/probus-2021-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2021-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 365–424, it is well known that Romance finite verbs move into the I-domain. However, the relationship between finiteness and verb movement has not yet been investigated in detail. The aim of the present study is to trace and analyse verb movement in various types of non-finite and semi-finite clauses in Romance, including infinitives with specified subjects, inflected infinitives, bare infinitival clauses, Aux-to-Comp (cf. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris), past participial clauses, and gerunds. It is shown that all types of Romance non-finite verbs move high, with the exception of French absolute participles and French infinitives. The picture of non-finite movement is thus more uniform than that of finite verb movement (cf. Schifano, Norma. 2018. Verb movement in Romance. A comparative study. Oxford: Oxford University Press). A unified account is proposed: non-finite verbs all need to be anchored to the speech act through a higher clause, which requires them to be in a local relation with the anchoring head Fin (cf. Groothuis, Kim A. 2020. Reflexes of finiteness in Romance. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Unpublished PhD thesis).","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77936764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}