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The volume brings together the papers read at the international conference on Romance Objects organized by the Linguistics Department of the Roma Tre University. It is characterized by a striking uniformity of approach, which is functional, and of methodology. The various case studies regarding the object focus on the syntax/semantics and syntax/pragmatics interfaces. The common denominator of the ten enquiries is the identification of the object category, the DO in particular, in Romance languages; at the same time some of the contributors relate the specific topic to more general questions of linguistic typology. Some of the essays are based on the analysis of data from a corpus and present a diachronic picture of the evolution of the specific topic investigated. Thus this volume is addressed not only to scholars interested in the Romance languages but also all those who study the object category in a cross-linguistic perspective. Michela Cennamo: (In)transitivity and object marking: some current issues.
This book examines grammatical changes during the transition from Latin to the Romance languages and the factors proposed to explain them. It challenges orthodoxy, presents new perspectives on language change, structure, and variation, and will appeal equally to Romance linguists, Latinists, philologists, and historical linguists of all persuasions.
Sicilian Elements in Andrea Camilleri’s Narrative Language examines Camilleri’s unique linguistic repertoire and techniques over his career as a novelist. It focuses on the intensification of Sicilian linguistic features in Camilleri’s narrative works, in particular features pertaining to the domains of sounds and grammar, since these have been marginalized in linguistic-centered research on the evolution of Camilleri’s narrative language and remain overall understudied. Through a systematic comparative analysis of the distribution patterns of selected Sicilian features in a selection of Camilleri’s historical novels and novels of the Montalbano series, the author identifies the in...
This book provides a comprehensive investigation of the origins, development, and stabilization of differential object marking (DOM) in Romanian. DOM, a means by which a grammar distinguishes between objects based on semantic features such as animacy or definiteness, has been a fruitful area of research in syntax, historical linguistics, and typology. In this volume, Virginia Hill and Alexandru Mardale demonstrate that Romanian DOM reflects a typological mix of Balkan and Romance patterns, and is in fact composed of three distinct mechanisms. Their analysis of these mechanisms reveals that DOM triggers in Romanian are located in the nominal domain, in contrast to languages such as Spanish, where they are located in the verbal domain. The cross-linguistic perspective adopted in the volume sheds light on existing typologies of DOM, particularly in relation to the variation observed in the merging location of the DOM particle and of the doubling pronominal clitic.
The volume Passives Cross-Linguistically provides analyses of passive constructions across different languages and populations from the interface perspectives between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In addition to the theoretical contributions, some experimental works are presented, which explore passives from psycholinguistic perspectives.
A Civil War is a history of the wartime Italian Resistance, recounted by a historian who, as a young man, took part in the struggle against Mussolini’s fascist Republic. Since its publication in Italy, Claudio Pavone’s masterwork has become indispensable to anyone seeking to understand this period and its continuing importance for the nation’s identity. Pavone casts a sober eye on his protagonists’ ethical and ideological motivations. He uncovers a multilayered conflict, in which class antagonisms, patriotism and political ideals all played a part. A clear understanding of this complexity allows him to explain many details of the post-war transition, as well as the legacy of the Resistance for modern Italy. In addition to being a monumental work of scholarship, A Civil War is a folk history, capturing events, personalities and attitudes that were on the verge of slipping entirely out of recollection to the detriment of Italy’s understanding of itself and its past.
This book explores the wealth of evidence from early Indo-Aryan for the existence of transitive nouns and adjectives, a rare linguistic phenomenon. The data is set in the wider historical context, from Proto-Indo-European to Modern Indo-Aryan, and analysed from diachronic, typological, and theoretical perspectives.
While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.