The morphosyntax-semantics interface and the Sicilian <i>Doubly Inflected Construction</i>

Todaro, Giuseppina; Prete, Fabio Del

doi:10.1075/la.251.07tod

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 10 publications

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“…See Di Caro (2018Caro ( , 2019 for a review of the additional motion verbs that can occur in DIC in different Sicilian varieties. On the special properties of send as V1, which involves both a motion and a causative semantics, see Todaro & Del Prete (2018) and Del Prete & Todaro (2020).…”

Section: Restructuring: An Integrated Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty shades of morphosyntactic microvariation

Cruschina¹,

Calabrese²

2020

Formal Approaches to Romance Morphosyntax

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In this paper, we analyse Motion Verb Constructions (MVCs) in southern Italian dialects, especially in Sicily and Apulia, which provide an ideal illustration of morphosyntactic microvariation. Depending on the grammatical status of the motion verb, we can distinguish between MVCs in which a lexical verb selects a purpose clause and those that involve a restructuring configuration where the motion verb behaves as a functional verb. We focus on the latter configuration and show that in these MVCs, the second verb can occur either as an infinitive or as a verb inflected for the same features as the motion verb. Following the most recent developments in Distributed Morphology, we then offer an analysis of the morphosyntactic and word-internal structure that surfaces as periphrastic morphology, and propose that the difference between the infinitival restructuring and double inflection is due to the nature of the agreement node within the verbal complex. Within this account, double inflection is simply viewed as a case of agreement within the extended vP which arises independently from restructuring. Finally, the defective paradigm of some MVCs and the configurations in which the motion verb has become a prefixal element are discussed and analysed as the result of specific wordinternal morphological operations.

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Section: Restructuring: An Integrated Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty shades of morphosyntactic microvariation

Cruschina¹,

Calabrese²

2020

Formal Approaches to Romance Morphosyntax

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Building complex events

Prete

Todaro

2019

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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We examine the Doubly Inflected Construction of Sicilian (DIC;Cardinaletti and Giusti 2001, 2003, Cruschina 2013, in which a motion verb V1 from a restricted set is followed by an event verb V2 and both verbs are inflected for the same person and tense features. The interpretation of DIC involves a complex event which behaves as a single, integrated event by linguistic tests. Based on data drawn from different sources, we argue that DIC is an asymmetrical serial verb construction (Aikhenvald 2006). We propose an analysis of DIC in which V1 and V2 enter the semantic composition as lexical verbs, with V1 contributing a motion event and projecting a theme and a goal argument which are identified, respectively, with an agent and a location argument projected by V2. A morphosyntactic mechanism of feature-spread requires that the person and tense features be realized both on V1 and on V2, while, semantically, these features are interpreted only once, in a position from which they take scope over the complex predicate resulting from the combination of V1 and V2. The semantic analysis is based on an operation of event concatenation, defined over spatio-temporally contiguous events which share specific participants, and is implemented in a neo-Davidsonian framework (Parsons 1990).

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Pseudo-Coordination and Multiple Agreement Constructions

Giusti

Ross

2022

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

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This introductory chapter provides background on the phenomena of Pseudo-Coordination (PseCo) and Multiple Agreement Constructions (MACs) with the aim of familiarizing readers with major trends in previous research on these varied phenomena. Common structural and functional properties used to identify PseCo and MACs are described, along with a detailed discussion of the features that make crucial differences within each phenomenon in individual languages and cross-linguistically. We also observe interesting similarities between the two phenomena and across related and unrelated languages. We maintain a pre-theoretical view here that is compatible with the different approaches represented in the volume.

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The morphosyntax-semantics interface and the Sicilian Doubly Inflected Construction

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

Fifty shades of morphosyntactic microvariation

Fifty shades of morphosyntactic microvariation

Building complex events

Pseudo-Coordination and Multiple Agreement Constructions

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