Linguistic Variation - Current Issue

Our Aromanian data come from Diviakë, Libofshë and Fier, three locations close to one another in southern Albania, and from Këllez, also in southern Albania. We argue that the impossibility of embedding sentences directly under V-v (Agree Resistance Theorem) leads to the overall shape of complementation in Romance. Section 2, on finite complementizers, shows that Aromanian supports analyses of complementizers as wh- pronouns independently developed for other Romance languages. Section 3 elaborates a proposal originally put forth for Albanian, where the subjunctive particle is identical to the Linker – namely that the main role of subjunctive particles is introducing a variable EPP argument, subject to control. Section 4 argues that Prepositional introducers of non-finite sentences amount to an obliquization strategy to circumvent Agree Resistance – as does the nominalization (relativization) strategy of Section 2 (and the predication strategy in Section 3).

This paper explores the syntactic status of che and (il) qual(e) relativizers, i.e. what are standardly referred to as relative complementizers and relative pronouns, in Old and Modern Italian and Italian varieties and proposes a unified analysis for both types of items. It takes into account the ongoing debate regarding the categorial status of relativizers (Kayne 1975, 2008, 2010; Lehmann 1984; Manzini & Savoia 2003, 2011, among many others) and aims at showing that what we call complementizers are not C⁰ heads, as commonly assumed. Instead, we propose that both relative “complementizers” and “pronouns” have the same categorial status, i.e. they are wh-items and are part of the relative clause-internal head.

In this paper, I will discuss some types of variation in wh-expressions asking for reasons such as why, what…for and how come with special attention to their base-generated positions in the framework of the cartography of syntactic structures. I will first discuss why and what…for to illustrate variation in the base-generated position of wh-expressions asking for reasons. I will next explore a new dimension in the cartography of syntactic structures by discussing some variation in the use of how come and the complementizer that among speakers.

In this article I analyze the complementizer doubling construction attested in some early and modern Italo-Romance varieties, where a preposed (clausal or non clausal) constituent associated to the selected clause appears in the embedded left periphery preceded and followed by a subordinating complementizer. While the higher complementizer is uncontroversially interpreted as a lexicalization of the head Force°, the lower complementizer has been taken to lexicalize either the functional head Topic° or the functional head Fin°. Relying on previous formal analyses of subject extraction, I argue that in the varieties in which the lower complementizer lexicalizes Fin°, its presence reflects the lexicalization of the mood features encoded by Fin°, and is ultimately due to the extraction of the thematic subject out of the embedded clause through Spec,FinP, a movement strategy made possible by the presence of an expletive pro in the canonical preverbal subject position.

The object of study of this paper is a Romance construction characterized by the presence of the complementizer in root clauses and by an evidential or epistemic meaning (i.e. C-constructions). In these structures, the complementizer is preceded by a functional element that morphologically coincides with an adjective or an adverb. From a morphosyntactic viewpoint, we show that these structures are monoclausal and that the epistemic or evidential item preceding the complementizer has undergone a process of grammaticalization becoming a functional element. As for their use and interpretation, we describe their primary semantic meaning, as well as their pragmatic extensions and functions, which involve subjectification and intersubjectivity. We finally propose a syntactic configuration that can account for C-constructions and their properties in the syntax representation. This configuration involves the assumption of a projection – in fact, a set of projections – above ForceP which encode speaker-oriented and pragmatic features (e.g. evaluative, evidential, epistemic values).

Object markers (OMs) in Bantu languages have long been argued to be either incorporated pronouns or agreement morphemes, distinguished mainly by their ability (or not) to co-occur with (i.e. double) in situ objects. Lubukusu appears to be an instance of OMs-as-incorporated pronouns, as OMs in neutral discourse contexts cannot double in situ objects in a broad range of syntactic contexts. As we show, however, certain pragmatic contexts in fact do license OM-doubling; we demonstrate that OM-doubling in Lubukusu is licit only on a verum (focus) interpretation. We analyze OM-doubling within a Minimalist framework as the result of an Agree relation between the object and a verum-triggering Emphasis head (Emph°). The non-doubling OM results from an incorporation operation. We therefore claim that Lubukusu displays two distinct syntactic derivations of OMs (generating doubling and non-doubling) with the interpretive effects of OM-doubling arising from the semantic/pragmatic properties of Emph°.