Light-headed relative clauses in Teramano

Abstract

We investigate an unstudied, rich component of the relative clause system in Teramano, one of the Upper Southern Italian languages. We focus on light-headed relative clauses – relative clauses that lack a full nominal head and are introduced by only a Determiner-like or pronominal “light head”. We also briefly describe headed relative clauses in Teramano since the morphosyntactic features they exhibit are relevant for the investigation of light-headed relative clauses. Last, we highlight commonalities and differences between light-headed relative clauses in Teramano and Italian. Our paper provides the first systematic in-depth description of light-headed relative clauses in an Upper Southern Italian language that we are aware of, contributes to the knowledge of Teramano, the study of light-headed relative clauses crosslinguistically, and the ongoing investigation of microvariation among Italian and Italian languages.

‘Why’ without asking in Romanian

“…Our findings in Romanian show that the unacceptability of why-FRs in English and most other Indo-European languages cannot be an absolute ban-a ban that would be due to a violation of core grammatical principles-a conclusion further supported by empirical evidence from Mesoamerican languages (Caponigro et al 2021) and Teramano, an Italian language (Mantenuto & Caponigro 2021). The existence of why-FRs in typologically unrelated languages strongly suggests that the grammar in general, and the syntax/semantic interface in particular, must allow for language variation in this area.…”

The Final Strongholds of the Infinitive: (Silent) Modals in Romanian and Southern Italy

“…also Gheorghe 2011) to refer to structures such as (2) in which the infinitive is preceded by a wh-relative which is itself the complement of an existential predicate, typically HAVE or BE, or, less frequently, a so-called dynamic predicate denoting coming into being or view, or availability, e.g., EMERGE, CHOOSE, LOOK FOR, FIND, DISCOVER, SEND, OBTAIN (Grosu 2004: 406;Šimík 2011: §2.2;Caponigro 2021: 11). In the literature there is considerable debate about the syntactico-semantic analysis of these structures, variously termed non-indicative wh-clauses (Izvorski 1998), irrealis free relatives (Grosu 1994;Grosu and Landman 1998), existential free relatives (Caponigro 2003(Caponigro , 2004(Caponigro , 2021Mantenuto and Caponigro 2020), modal existential constructions (Grosu 2004(Grosu , 2013Šimík 2008Cinque 2020: 105-106), kind-defining headless relatives (Benincà and Cinque 2014: §2.2), and indefinite free relatives (Kotek and Erlewine 2016: §3.2), the details of which need not detain us here. Suffice it to note for our purposes that infinitival relatives can broadly be described as existentials in which the fronted wh-phrase has the semantic force of a narrow-scope indefinite (Caponigro 2004(Caponigro : 46, 2021Grosu 2004: 406) and the infinitive is marked by the inclusion of a possibility/ability modal operator (Izvorksi 1998: 160;Grosu 2004: 402;Simík 2008: 127), as witnessed by the use of modal CAN in the paraphrase of (2), namely, You have nothing that you can drink, as well as the optional realization of CAN before the infinitive in such examples as Italian non ho dove (posso) lavorare 'NEG have.1SG where (can.1SG) work.INF (= I've nowhere to work)'.…”