The Syntax and Semantics of the Weak Locative

Tortora, Christina

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199945627.003.0002

Cited by 22 publications

(41 citation statements)

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“…The idea of a null or implicit location as the argument of the existential predication has been formulated in various terms or with reference to somewhat different notions, such as Erteschik-Shir's (1997) stage topic and Kratzer's (1995) event argument (see also Hazout 2004 andKallulli 2008). This null argument may also identify with the null locative argument postulated for unaccusative constructions (Benincà 1988, Saccon 1993, Pinto 1997, Tortora 1997, Sheehan 2006; see also Babby 1980, Rigau 1997, Partee and Borschev 2002, Leonetti 2008a, Parry 2010. In several languages, crucial evidence in favour of the idea of a null locative or, in general, of a parallelism between existential sentences and locative constructions comes from the presence of a locative proform.…”

Section: Be-existentials In Italo-romancementioning

confidence: 64%

Patterns of variation in existential constructions

Cruschina

2015

isogloss

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The main goal of the present paper is twofold: on the one hand, to highlight the patterns of variation among the existential constructions found in Italo-Romance; on the other, to examine the observed microvariation in a comparative perspective in order to identify common properties and general tendencies. Starting from a description of the variation concerning the primary components of existentials, I demonstrate that, irrespective of the superficial morphosyntactic variation attested, all Italo-Romance existential constructions share a fundamental property: their distinguishing features can all be viewed as the reflection of the persistence of formal properties continuing or overlapping with a source construction. This construction is either the locative predication, when be is selected, or the possessive structure, when the existential copula is have. The pivot of the existential construction therefore shows typical properties of arguments, but is however subject to a high degree of instability and variation because it has been semantically reanalysed as the predicate of an abstract contextual domain serving as the argument of the existential proposition. This mismatch between the syntactic and the semantic characteristics of existential structures contributes to the microvariation encountered.

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Section: Be-existentials In Italo-romancementioning

confidence: 64%

Patterns of variation in existential constructions

Cruschina

2015

isogloss

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“…7b). The marking of sentence focus with VS order is the phenomenon which is usually referred to as 'subject inversion' (see Benincà 1988, Calabrese 1992, Saccon 1993, Pinto 1997, Tortora 1997, Sheehan 2006 Lambrecht (1994Lambrecht ( : 177-81, 2000, existentials should be included in this class. Significantly, in our findings, these constructions are characterized by the encoding of the focal pivot in the immediately post-copular position.…”

Section: Sentence-focus Existentials With No Overt Topicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hazout (2004) and Kallulli (2008) identify this null argument with Kratzer's (1995) event argument. According to a number of studies investigating the syntactic and semantic properties of constructions featuring VS order in ItaloRomance, existentials involve a null locative argument (Benincà 1988, Saccon 1993, Pinto 1997, Tortora 1997, Sheehan 2006.…”

Section: Stage-level Topics and Contextual Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Bentley

Ciconte

Cruschina

2015

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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.

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“…Another Piedmontese dialect which displays post-participle clitics is Borgomanerese, discussed by Kayne (1994:144,n.8) and Tortora (1997), (2002), (2014). In this dialect, things are even more challenging than in the dialects discussed so far.…”

Section: Borgomaneresementioning

confidence: 99%

“…they have everything carried-to.him away 'They have taken everything away from him.' Some of the cases displaying post-participle clitics, such as those in (4) found in the Borgomanerese dialect studied by Tortora (1997Tortora ( ), (2002Tortora ( ), (2014, also seem to represent a counterexample to a second robust cross-linguistic generalisation, which can be represented as in (5)- (6): (4) I o vüst piö-lla. I have seen anymore-her 'I haven't seen her anymore.'…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cases of apparent enclisis on past participles in Romance varieties

Cardinaletti

2015

isogloss

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This paper deals with cases of apparent enclisis on past participles in North-Western Italian varieties. It is claimed that these cases do not involve clitic pronouns, but weak pronouns in the sense of Cardinaletti and Starke (1999). Both syntactic and morphophonological evidence is discussed. Some varieties display both proclitics and postverbal weak pronouns and use them in different syntactic contexts. Other varieties lack clitic pronouns in their lexicon altogether and only display weak pronouns (alongside strong pronouns), similarly to what happens in e.g. Germanic languages.

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The Syntax and Semantics of the Weak Locative

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Patterns of variation in existential constructions

Patterns of variation in existential constructions

Existentials and Locatives in Romance Dialects of Italy

Cases of apparent enclisis on past participles in Romance varieties

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