ProbusPub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2020-0006
A. Calabrese
{"title":"Remarks on the Role of the Perfect Participle in Italian Morphology and on its History","authors":"A. Calabrese","doi":"10.1515/probus-2020-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2020-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since (Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by itself. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), the disparate morphosyntactic roles that past participle forms have in Latin (and Italian) morphology have played a central role in arguing for morphomic approaches. In this article, I will propose an alternative analysis of the special behavior of these participle forms in Distributed Morphology (DM, Halle Morris, & Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.). In particular, I will propose that morphological spell-out, as a first stage of the PF derivation, includes morphological repairs triggered by abstract “morphomic” constraints. These repairs can insert “ornamental” pieces – structures that are not motivated syntactically or semantically but only morphologically – to mediate the interface between abstract syntactico-semantic structures and surface PF construction. I will demonstrate the role that these repairs play in accounting for the surface convergence between perfect and passive participle forms, and adjectival stative ones, and for the appearance of past participles in nominalizations. The article ends with an analysis of Latin past participle morphology focusing on its historical development. The first part of this analysis deals with the development of Latin verbal structure from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and in particular with the development of “ornamental” thematic vowels. It then turns to a brief investigation of the historical development of the Latin past participle exponent /-t-/ from PIE adjectival suffix *-tó-, and of the PIE agentive and action/result nominal suffixes *-tér/tor, *-ti-, *-tu, *-men-(to)-. This will lead to a discussion of Latin nominalizations, the supine and the future participle and a possible explanation of why they contain participial morphology.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73002521","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 : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2020-0008
Ángel J. Gallego
{"title":"Morpho-syntactic Variation in Romance v: A Micro-parametric Approach","authors":"Ángel J. Gallego","doi":"10.1515/probus-2020-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2020-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper discusses a series of morpho-syntactic properties of Romance languages that have the functional projection vP as its locus, showing a continuum that goes from strongly configurational Romance languages to partially configurational Romance languages. It is argued that v-related phenomena like Differential Object Marking (DOM), participial agreement, oblique clitics, auxiliary selection, and others align in a systematic way when it comes to inflectional properties that involve Case-agreement properties. In order to account for the facts, I argue for a micro-parametric approach whereby v can be associated with an additional projection subject to variation (cf. D’Alessandro, Merging Probes. A typology of person splits and person-driven differential object marking. Ms., University of Leiden, 2012; Microvariation and syntactic theory. What dialects tell us about language. Invited talk given at the workshop The Syntactic Variation of Catalan and Spanish Dialects, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, June 26–28, 2013; Ordóñez, Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan. In Sergio Baauw, Frank AC Drijkoningen & Manuela Pinto (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2005: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005, 259–280. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007). I label such projection “X,” arguing that its feature content and position varies across Romance. More generally, the present paper aims at contributing to our understanding of parametric variation of closely related languages by exploiting the intuition, embodied in the so-called Borer-Chomsky Conjecture, that linguistic variation resides in the functional inventory of the lexicon.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77672840","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 : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0005
Chiara Gianollo
{"title":"DP-internal Inversion and Negative Polarity: Latin aliquis and its Romance Descendants","authors":"Chiara Gianollo","doi":"10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0005","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90344405","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 : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0002
Michelle Sheehan
{"title":"The Development of Exceptional Case Marking in Romance with a Particular Focus on French","authors":"Michelle Sheehan","doi":"10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper traces the development of so-called Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) under perception, permissive and causative verbs in Romance. Synchronically, we can observe various patterns in the distribution of ECM complements under these verbs. In Portuguese and Spanish, ECM is often possible under all permissive and causative verbs, whereas in French, Catalan and Italian it is usually restricted to perception and permissive verbs. A detail that has not been much discussed is the fact that, for many speakers, ECM with a given verb is often restricted to contexts in which the embedded ‘subject’ is a clitic. Some speakers of Modern French display this pattern with the verb faire ‘make’, for example (Abeillé, Anne, Danièle Godard & Philip Miller. 1997. Les causatives en français : Un cas de compétition syntaxique. Langue Française 115. 62–74. https://doi.org/10.3406/lfr.1997.6222). In this paper, I claim that laisser ‘let’ probably also displayed this pattern in Middle French. In Old French, however, what appears to be the opposite pattern is observed. Following (Pearce, Elizabeth. 1990. Parameters in Old French syntax: Infinitival complements. Dordrecht: Kluwer), I attribute this to the morphological variability of dative case in Old French. I propose a case-based analysis of the clitic ECM pattern, whereby ECM complements in Romance are phases unlike clause union complements (see Sheehan, Michelle & Sonia Cyrino. 2018. Why do some ECM verbs resist passivisation? A phase-based explanation. In Sherry Hucklebridge & Max Nelson (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 48 (vol 3), 81–90. University of Massachusetts). Where such complements are embedded under light verbs, the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) prevents accusative case from being assigned to the lower subject except in instances of cliticization. When the matrix verb is reanalysed as a full verb, however, v becomes the case-assigning head and so ECM becomes generally available, regardless of the clitic/non-clitic status of the causee.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84263245","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 : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0001
Adina Dragomirescu, Alexandru Nicolae
{"title":"From Motion to Desire: The Grammaticalization of a Change of Location Unaccusative Construction in Romanian","authors":"Adina Dragomirescu, Alexandru Nicolae","doi":"10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper documents the steps and analyses the processes by which a concrete change of location unaccusative construction based on a venitive verb grammaticalizes in Romanian as a modal construction exhibiting a variety of desiderative meanings, the most prominent of which is the urge-type of desiderative meaning. This diachronic change is atypical: the venitive verb underwent desemanticization but does not show any detectable morphophonological erosion or decategorialization. Furthermore, the desiderative meaning arises only when the venitive verb is accompanied by a dative clitic (originally, a goal of motion) and a subjunctive CP.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83757166","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 : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0004
Luigi Andriani, Kim A. Groothuis, Giuseppina Silvestri
{"title":"Pathways of Grammaticalisation in Italo-Romance","authors":"Luigi Andriani, Kim A. Groothuis, Giuseppina Silvestri","doi":"10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/PROBUS-2020-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The aim of this contribution is to discuss three possible theoretical interpretations of grammaticalised structures in present-day Italo-Romance varieties. In particular, we discuss and analyse three diachronic case studies in relation to the generative view of grammaticalisation. The first case-study revolves around the expression of future tense and modality. This is discussed in the light of the assumption according to which grammaticalised elements result from merging elements in higher positions than their original merge positions within the lexical domain, giving rise to the upward directionality of the grammaticalisation process within the clause (Roberts, Ian G. and Anna Roussou, 2003, Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The second case study challenges this view, by discussing irrealis complementisers as a case of a downward pathway of grammaticalization at the CP level. For our third case study, namely the development of (discontinuous) demonstrative structures from Latin to Romance, the rich Italo-Romance empirical evidence is analysed through the lens of a parametric account (Longobardi, Giuseppe, Cristina Guardiano, Giuseppina Silvestri, Alessio Boattini, and Andrea Ceolin, 2013, Toward a syntactic phylogeny of modern Indo-European languages, Journal of Historical Linguistics 3(1), 122-152), in order to capture the role of the relevant semantic and syntactic features within the fine-grained architecture of the DP. It will be observed that the diachronic development of some functional categories in (Italo-)Romance results from cyclic pathways of grammaticalisation, as the same category might cyclically change from more synthetic to more analytic, and vice-versa. Moreover, it will also be shown how the two theoretical approaches adopted, i.e. the cartographic model (adopted in Roberts, Ian G. and Anna Roussou, 2003. Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), and the parametric accounts (Longobardi, Giuseppe, Cristina Guardiano, Giuseppina Silvestri, Alessio Boattini and Andrea Ceolin, 2013, Toward a syntactic phylogeny of modern Indo-European languages, Journal of Historical Linguistics 3(1), 122-152), are able to provide a principled explanation of the structural correlates of grammaticalisation at the sentential, clausal and nominal level of investigation.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75778712","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 : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1515/probus-2020-0003
Tobias Scheer, Philippe Ségéral
{"title":"Elastic s+C and Left-moving Yod in the Evolution from Latin to French","authors":"Tobias Scheer, Philippe Ségéral","doi":"10.1515/probus-2020-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2020-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Elastic s+C is the idea that s+C clusters are heterosyllabic by default in all languages, and that some repair will occur in case, pending on language-specific circumstances, a heterosyllabic parse is illegal (preceding long vowel, preceding coda, beginning of the word). The repair at hand is the branching of the s on the following empty nucleus. This generalization is derived from the behaviour of left-moving yod in the diachronic evolution from Latin to French. The floating yod (here coming from palatalization k+i,e > j+ʦ) anchors as a coda if the preceding syllable is open (placēre > plaisir), but is lost in case it is closed (cancellāre > chanceler), except when the syllable-final C is s (cresc(e)re > croistre (mod. croître)). We know independently that intervocalic s+C clusters are regular coda clusters: they block diphthongization (testa > teste (mod. tête)). Hence s is elastic: s+C is a regular coda cluster unless there is a demand for s to vacate its coda position. It is shown that among all syllabic identities for s+C that are entertained in the literature only one is compatible with this pattern: in CsC clusters, i.e. in absence of a preceding vowel, s branches on the following empty nucleus, i.e. the one that separates it from the following C. This is confirmed by an independent pattern: the middle consonant of CCC clusters is lost unless it is s (CsC), but is regularly dropped in sCC clusters. Here as well s+C is a regular coda-onset cluster when preceded by a vowel (sCC), but s elastically becomes a non-coda when preceded by a consonant (CsC). This empirical generalization appears to be an unprecedented finding: s in s+C is a coda when preceded by a vowel, but a (branching) non-coda when not preceded by a vowel. It is shown that it may solve a good deal of the notoriously mysterious behaviour of s+C clusters as such, i.e. in other languages and in synchronic analysis. Word-initially s+C is not followed by a vowel and therefore a non-coda, thus accounting for the typical cross-linguistic pattern whereby s+C is exceptional word-initially, but not word-internally (where it is followed by a vowel). Also, the branching analysis solves the mysterious fact that s only shows exceptional behaviour when it is followed by a consonant: there is no empty nucleus it could branch on when followed by a vowel.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89741378","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 : 2020-04-21DOI: 10.1515/probus-2019-0004
Bradley Hoot, Tania Leal
{"title":"Processing subject focus across two Spanish varieties","authors":"Bradley Hoot, Tania Leal","doi":"10.1515/probus-2019-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2019-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Linguists have keenly studied the realization of focus – the part of the sentence introducing new information – because it involves the interaction of different linguistic modules. Syntacticians have argued that Spanish uses word order for information-structural purposes, marking focused constituents via rightmost movement. However, recent studies have challenged this claim. To contribute sentence-processing evidence, we conducted a self-paced reading task and a judgment task with Mexican and Catalonian Spanish speakers. We found that movement to final position can signal focus in Spanish, in contrast to the aforementioned work. We contextualize our results within the literature, identifying three basic facts that theories of Spanish focus and theories of language processing should explain, and advance a fourth: that mismatches in information-structural expectations can induce processing delays. Finally, we propose that some differences in the existing experimental results may stem from methodological differences.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72560629","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 : 2020-04-21DOI: 10.1515/probus-2019-0006
J. Authier
{"title":"On the comparative analysis of French (ne) … que exceptives","authors":"J. Authier","doi":"10.1515/probus-2019-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2019-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article takes a close look at recent proposals that French (ne) … que exceptives are hidden comparatives involving two silent elements: a covert n-word and a phonologically unrealized autre ‘other’ introducing a partially elided comparative clausal standard headed by que ‘than’. I show that assuming the constant presence of an n-word in the exceptive construction allows us to provide inter alia a scopal treatment of the fact that (ne) … que exceptives in modal contexts are systematically ambiguous between an exclusive reading and a minimal sufficiency reading. As regards the comparative analysis of exceptives, I demonstrate that while the locality of association problem raised by (Homer. 2015. Ne … que and its challenges. In Ulrike Steindl, Thomas Borer, Huilin Fang, Alfredo García Pardo, Peter Guekguezian, Brian Hsu, Charlie O’Hara & Iris Chuoying Ouyang (eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 111–120. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.) can be resolved by assuming that in French, the standard of comparatives can be clausal or just nominal, the fact that (ne) … que displays a lexically-encoded, conventionalized meaning dependency on focus that is absent from its alleged comparative maximal phonological realization casts some serious doubt on the viability of the comparative analysis of French exceptives. Finally, I examine a number of contexts in which the n-word component of (ne) … que must be overt and argue that this constraint follows from the Intonational Phrase Edge Generalization.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85384946","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}