Indefinite determiners in two northern Italian dialects: A quantitative approach

Gianluca E. Lebani; Giuliana Giusti

doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.122

Indefinite determiners in two northern Italian dialects

A quantitative approach

Authors

Gianluca E. Lebani Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Giuliana Giusti Ca' Foscari University of Venice

PDF

Abstract

Italian and Italian dialects express indefiniteness in different ways, among which with a null determiner (ZERO) like all other Romance languages, but also with the definite article (ART) unlike what is found in Romance. Italian and some northern Italian dialects also display the so-called “partitive determiner” DI+ART, which is present in French. Few northwestern Italian dialects display (bare) DI, parallel to French. We adopt Cardinaletti and Giusti’s (2015, 2016) unified analysis and build on Cardinaletti and Giusti’s (2018, 2020) hypothesis that the variation and optionality in the distribution of the four determiners in regional Italian mirror their distribution in Italian dialects along two isoglosses: the ART isogloss spreading from the center of Italy towards north-west and south-east; and the DI isogloss spreading from Piedmont eastwards. We conduct a quantitative analysis on the results of a questionnaire in Piacentino and Rodigino. We test the distribution of the four determiners with mass and count nouns in two dimensions: sentence type (positive vs. negative) and predicate type (telic vs. atelic). The results confirm the hypothesis that the complexity of the determiner is related to its distribution highlighting two hierarchies of contexts: NEG < POS and ATEL < TEL. It also confirms that Piacentino, located at the crossroads of the ART and DI isoglosses, has more optionality than Rodigino, located at their borders.

Keywords

Italian dialects, indefinite determiners, partitive articles

References

Antonaci, Claudia. 2018. On indefiniteness and the distribution of indefinite determiners in Salento. Term paper. MA in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Brasoveanu, Adrian & Donka Farkas. 2016. Indefinite. In Maria Aloni & Paul Dekker (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of Formal Semantics, 238-266. Cambridge: CUP.

Cardinaletti, Anna & Michal Starke. 1999. The typology of structural deficiency: A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.), Clitics in the languages of Europe, 145-233. Berlin/NY: Mouton de Gruyter.

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2015. Cartography and optional feature realization in the nominal expression. In Ur Shlonsky (ed.) Beyond Functional Sequence [The Cartography of Syntactic Structures 10], 151-172. Oxford/NY: OUP.

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2016. The syntax of the Italian determiner dei. Lingua 181: 58-80.

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2018. Indefinite determiners. Variation and Optionality in Italoromance. In R. D'Alessandro & D. Pescarini (eds.), Advances in Italian Dialectology [Grammars and Sketches of the World's Languages – Romance 1], 135-161. Amsterdam: Brill.

Cardinaletti, Anna & Giuliana Giusti. 2020. Indefinite determiners in informal Italian: A preliminary analysis. Linguistics. 58(3): 679-712.

Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen & Claire Beyssade. 2004. Définir les indéfinis. CNRS Editions.

Espinal, Maria Teresa & Sonia Cyrino 2021. A syntactically-driven approach to indefiniteness, (anti-)specificity and partitivity in Romance. Paper delivered at LSRL50, University of Texas.

Forster, Kenneth I. and Rod G. Dickinson. 1976. More on the Language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: Monte Carlo estimates of error rates for F1, F2, F', and min F'. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 15(2): 135–142.

Furlan, Erica. 2018. Indefinite determiners, variation and optionality in an Eastern Venetan variety. Term paper.

Giusti, Giuliana. 2021. A protocol for indefinite determiners in Italo-Romance. In T. Ihsane (ed.) Disentangling Bare Nouns and Nominals Introduced by a Partitive Article [Syntax & Semantics 43], 262-300. Amsterdam: Brill.

Ihsane, Tabea. 2008. The Layered DP. Form and meaning of French indefinites. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

ISTAT 2017. Report 2015. L’uso della lingua italiana, dei dialetti, delle lingue straniere. https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/207961

Jahberg, Karl & Jakob Jud. 1928-1940. Sach-und Sprachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz, Ringier.

Krippendorff, Klaus 2004. Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology, 2nd edition. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Leonetti, Manuel. 2019. On weak reading of definite DPs. In N. Pomino (ed.) Proceedings of the IX Nereus International Workshop. Morphosyntactic and Semantic Aspects of the DP in Romance and beyond. [Arbeitspapier 131], 1-26. Konstanz: Konstanzer Online-Publication System.

Maesano, Deborah. 2018. Expressing indefiniteness in Southern the Calabrian dialect of Galati (RC). Term paper. MA in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Molinari, Luca. 2020. The Expression of indefiniteness and optionality in the dialect of Piacenza. MA thesis in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Molinari, Luca. 2018. The distribution of indefinite determiners in Piacentino. Term paper. MA in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Procentese, Cristina. 2019. Indefinite determiners in Neapolitan. A comparative study with Italian. Term paper. MA in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Perinot, Lara. 2018. Reduced concord and optionality in Friulian. Term paper. MA in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Vicenti, Rosa. 2019. Indefinite determiners in the dialect of Altamura. Term paper. MA in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Zamparelli, Roberto. 2000. Layers in the determiner phrase. NY: Garland.

Zanaga, Micol. 2018. Indefinite determiners in Rodigino. Term paper. MA in Language Sciences, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.