Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Abstract

This volume provides the first ever large-scale comparative treatment of there sentences (there copula NP), reporting the results of a survey of Italo-Romance and Sardinian dialects of Italy. The volume comprises detailed discussions of focus structure, predication and argument realization, the definiteness effects, and the linking from semantics to syntax in there sentences, advancing novel proposals in each case. The testing of influential hypotheses on existential constructions against first-hand dialect evidence leads the book to argue that existential and locative there sentences differ in focus structure and semantics, although their not being predicate focus constructions and the non-canonicality of the predicate—which is typically referential—is reflected in their shared morphosyntactic features. The hypothesis that the pivot is the predicate of the existential construction is adopted in the analysis, although a distinction is drawn between referential and non-referential pivots, which explains variation in pivot behaviour in morphosyntax. The volume also provides the historical background of Romance there sentences, relying on the findings of the analysis of a substantial corpus of early Italo-Romance vernacular texts.

The silent argument of broad focus: Typology and predictions

“…Existential there-sentences are structures with non-canonical morphosyntax, which express a proposition about existence or presence in a context (McNally 2011;Bentley, Ciconte & Cruschina 2015). Traditionally, they have been related to locatives (Lyons 1967;Clark 1978;Creissels 2014).…”

“…A key difference between the BFSI constructions discussed in previous sections, on the one hand, and existentials, on the other, is that the contextual domain variable is an obligatory component of the existential construction. In fact, existentials have obligatory VS order and do not allow SV counterparts (see Bentley, Ciconte & Cruschina 2015: 139 for some apparent exceptions). Thus, strictly speaking, they are not subject inversion constructions, even though the pivot may exhibit patterns of subject behaviour (see Bentley 2013; for an in-depth discussions of this point).…”

Non-prototypical clefts

“…Following and developing this idea within a formal semantic approach, Francez (2007) proposes that in the existential predication, the pivot is the predicate of a contextual domain variable, which we may intuitively think of as a location and which could be considered to be syntactically encoded by an implicit or phonologically null argument (see also Francez 2010;Bentley, Ciconte and Cruschina 2015). This implicit argument is highly context-dependent, as shown in (14) (adapted from Francez 2007Francez , 2010:…”

“…The copular clause systematically contains the copula be. The existential construction, however, exhibits a high degree of variation (see Cruschina 2014Cruschina , 2015aBentley, Ciconte and Cruschina 2015;;Bentley and Cruschina 2016). This variation relates not only to the presence or absence of a proform, but also to the choice of the verbal copula used to express existential propositions, which can be an outcome of Latin ESSE 'be' or HABERE 'have', but also of STARE 'stand' in some dialects.…”

Complex copula systems as suppletive allomorphy

“…Schoorlemmer 2007). A number of Italo-Romance varieties, particularly in northern Italy, have such an expletive in combination with be in existential sentences (Bentley, Ciconte & Cruschina 2015;Bentley 2016); so too does African American Vernacular English (alongside the constructions mentioned in footnote 25, for some speakers; this example is from Green 2002: 81, her (10a)):…”