DPs in Southern Italy

A comparative perspective
Cristina Guardiano
CIDSM 6 - Cambridge, June 17, 2011

Mapping the DP in the Mediterranean

Here: a tiny selection









 











A promising testing-ground

1. Background: use of formal tools in order

to detect the effects of language contact on
syntax
(Cornips/Corrigan 2005 a.o.)

The goals of the project

1. Analysis of the properties of the DP across the area in a systematic fashion

2. Small communities, (endangered) minority languages in situations of unbalanced contact

2. Comparison of the varieties:

genealogical groups
contact relations
impact of vertical (i.e. diachronic) transmission and horizontal (i.e. contact-induced)
convergence/divergence on syntactic structures
3. Hypotheses of genes-languages congruence (i.e. is there any parallelism in the processes of
interaction of vertical and horizontal transmission? Boattini/Guardiano 2010)

Languages in the area

Relations

Parametric description
1. Crosslinguistic representation of the
DP (Longobardi and Guardiano 2009)

3. DP-subdomains:




2. Peculiar sociolinguistic situation

Features in D
Definiteness in D and across the DP

3. Long-lasting intense and unbalanced

contact between Romance and nonRomance varieties

Rohlfs (1982, 1997), Profili (1983, 1999 a.o.), Katsoyannou (various works), Karanastasis (1974, 1991,
1992), Fanciullo (2001); Manolessou (2005, for a
summary of the relevant literature)

Literature: Cornips/Corrigan (2005 a and b), Baptista/Guer

on (2007), Ansaldo (2009) a.o.

2. 50 parameters

1. Peculiar historical past

4. Intricate network of relations whose

effects are visible on both the sociolinguistic and the structural (internal) level




Count in D and across the DP

Noun (NP) movement
Adjectives

   


Arguments of the noun (genitives)

 
 

Possessives
Demonstratives

Data collection
Collection of empirical evidence:

A first attempt
1. Focus on the DP
( literature: no systematic attention specifically on the DP in the extreme Southern varieties)
2. For each variety: peculiarities within the DP-syntax with respect to:
a. Standard varieties; b. Other non-standard varieties in the area
( no systematic attempt of comparison in the literature)
3. Analysis of similarities and differences across the varieties (i.e. measuring the degree of
similarity: syntactic distance between each two varieties)
4. Isolation of patterns of change/variation; analysis of the role of contact on syntactic variation
(i.e. if and how massively syntactic structures are affected by areal contact)

The DP-questionnaire (trigger list)

Additional evidence coming from
the literature
Refinement of the questionnaire
(according to the requirements of dialectal
varieties)
Setting the value of each parameter
Comparison: numbering similarities and
differences for each pair of languages

Features of D
1. Grammaticalization of definiteness and count (i.e. development of a definite and an indefinite article, respectively)
2. Vertical process from Ancient to Modern Greek and from (late) Latin (?) to Romance
3. Crosslinguistically shared process (tipically Indo-European)

DPs in Southern Italy. A comparative perspective

Cristina Guardiano, Universit
a di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Noun Movement

Noun Movement: Data

1. Greek: well-attested across the whole history of the language no movement

of the noun (or the NP) across the
(structured) adjectives no postnominal
(structured) adjectives in Greek
(Alexiadou various works; Stavrou various
works; Guardiano 2003, 2006)

Distances

1. una nuova macchina (blu tedesca)

2. na m`
akina n`
oa (bblu teteska) vs.
*na n`
oa m`
akina
3. na machina nova (bblu teteska) vs.
*na nova machina
4. na machna nova (blu tedesca) vs.
*na nova machna

2. Romance: more variability noun

movement across (at least some) structured adjectival projections (Longobardi
2001); landing sites variable across varieties (Bernstein various works)

5. una bella macchina (blu tedesca)

6. na bella/bedda machina (blu tedesca)
7. na beda machina (bblu teteska)

A contact effect?

8. na bella machna (blu tedesca)

1. Gricos patterns: Romance-like rather

than Greek-like contact (?)

9. (ida) ena oreo kenurjo ble jermaniko

aftokinito

2. Lexical borrowing from Romance dialects to Grico: adjectives more massively

than other classes of items (60percent,
Katsoyannou 1999)
Effects on syntax? (cf. Spanish adjectives in Basque, Trask 2003)

10. mel`etisa ton orrio libbro;

ida ton a`ntrepo gi`
oveno

Tree

Genitives
1. il (famoso) ritratto (famoso) di Maria
2. lu ritrattu (famosu) te la Maria
3. u ritrattu (nuovu) ri Maria
4. haj vist a sura damic mwija (Silvestri 2011)
5. a kasa u sinnk // u sakkitt a farina // u cil a vucca (Productive, Silvestri 2011)
6. ppamuri u Signuri // u saccu a farina // u cjelu a vucca (Residual)
7. to (oreo) portreto tis marias
8. u litrattu (orrio) tu ciuruti// o bbuttijuna tu kras`u

Genitives from ancient to modern languages









 


 



 

 

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Demonstratives
1. Greek: co-occurrence with the article, more than one position (no diachronic variation)
2. Italian varieties: no co-occurrence with the article, one position (DP-initial)
3. Grico (Grecanico): no co-occurrence with the article, one position (DP-initial)
itti antrepi / iso spiti / iso orrio spitimmu me diu cipu

Slides and references

cristina.guardiano@unimore.it; http://cdm.unimo.it/home/dipslc/guardiano.cristina/