The role of dialects in the emergence of Italian phrasal verbs

Abstract

Romance Languages are a less homogenous group than depicted by current typological descriptions. Although Verb-Framing structures are predominantly used, Satellite-Framing constructions are present in all major Romance varieties and prevalent in some minor varieties. The study of the dialects of Italy shows that the presence of Phrasal Verbs (PhV) in the Italian language is due to an internal development (which finds antecedents in vulgar and late Latin) that gave rise to a construction that has been present in Tuscan dialects since their origins. The particular history of the relationship between dialects and the national language helps to explain the more frequent occurrence of PhVs in current standard Italian as compared to the other major Romance languages. The confutation of the hypothesis whereby the origin of Italian PhVs depends on a calque from the German language, although based on diachronic and diatopic data on the presence of PhVs in the dialects of Italy, has important methodological consequences. It shows that a typological model of the encoding of motion events must encompass the processes of internal variations (that may also depend on diamesic and diastratic factors) and not explain the causes of change only through external influence.

(And yet) another proposal for ser/estar

“…Accordingly, examples like those in (23) Gianni has scraped away the paint 16 Despite claims to the contrary, verb-particle constructions are not a quirk of Italian but can also be found in other Romance languages (e.g., see Iacobini [2009]). For instance, Mateu and Rigau (2010) show that many verb-particle constructions from Dante's dialect (see Masini [2006: 87-99 c. John danced away.…”

Particle Choices and Collocation in Cameroon English Phrasal Verbs

“…In spite of the plausibility of this stipulation, it is noticed that the main problem, for a morphological analysis of phrasal verbs, is the violation of the principle of lexical integrity. Though the verb and the particle form a semantic unit that may take on an idiomatic meaning differently from prefixed words, the particle and the verb, although closely connected, do not completely fuse to form an inseparable complex word (Iacobini, 2009).…”

Path: Ways Typology has Walked Through it

“…For S‐framed to V‐framed typological shifts, the reader is redirected to Kopecka (2004; 2006; forthcoming) on French and to Méndez Dosuna (1997), Skopeteas (2008) and Imbert (2008) on Greek. See also Iacobini (2009) and Iacobini and Masini (2006) for a “live” observation of the current emergence of S‐framing in V‐framed Italian, by way of verb‐particle constructions.…”

“…Finally, when such a template proved insufficient, issues were raised and new proposals were made. showed how further refinements dealt with “leaky” framing types (Aske 1989, Slobin and Hoiting 1994, Slobin 1996a, diachronic studies 9 such as Kopecka forthcoming, Iacobini 2009, among others). However, when it came to families such as Sino‐Tibetan, Niger‐Congo or Austronesian, or tricky constructions such as “complex predicates”, even more difficulties arose and, finally, more drastic modifications of Talmy’s framework were suggested.…”