Towards a Typology of Zero Aboutness: Expletive A in Fornese and Chiru in Cilentano

This paper investigates the syntactic–pragmatic behavior of two expletive-like elements, namely a and chiru, in Fornese and Cilentano, two Romance varieties spoken in Northern and Southern Italy, respectively. We argue that a and chiru are not bona fide expletive subjects but discourse-pragmatic exp...

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Vydáno v:Languages (Basel) Ročník 9; číslo 2; s. 60
Hlavní autoři: De Cia, Simone, Cerullo, Mariangela
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2024
Témata:
aboutness/shift
Classroom communication
Clauses
Data collection
Dialects
Discourse
expletive
Expletives
Grammatical subject
Italian Dialects
Kuki-Chin languages
Language varieties
Languages
morpho-syntax
Morphosyntax
Neapolitan language
Pragmatics
Romance languages
Satisfaction
Syntax pragmatics interface
topic
Topics
Italy
ISSN:2226-471X, 2226-471X
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Shrnutí:This paper investigates the syntactic–pragmatic behavior of two expletive-like elements, namely a and chiru, in Fornese and Cilentano, two Romance varieties spoken in Northern and Southern Italy, respectively. We argue that a and chiru are not bona fide expletive subjects but discourse-pragmatic expletives, which mark zero aboutness or the absence of an aboutness referent in an utterance. The investigation of Fornese and Cilentano points towards the existence of a sub-class of null-subject languages where aboutness as a discourse feature must be structurally satisfied by merging an overt or null topic in the syntactic spine of the clause. In the absence of such an element—for example, in thetic clauses—a discourse-pragmatic expletive is externally merged as a last-resort strategy to satisfy [uAboutness]. We argue that, in these null-subject languages, the satisfaction of the discourse feature [uAboutness] is an LF requirement, which is subject to a parametric choice. We show that, in Fornese, “default” [aboutness] is satisfied in SubjP, which is the canonical syntactic position for overt subjects within a cartographic approach. In Cilentano, on the other hand, [aboutness] is satisfied in a higher position within the C-domain, namely ShiftP, the canonical syntactic position that hosts overt aboutness/shift topics.
Bibliografie:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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content type line 14
ISSN:2226-471X
2226-471X
DOI:10.3390/languages9020060