Topic Strategies and the Internal Structure of Nominal Arguments in Greek and Italian

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4920108
AutoresTheodora Alexopoulou (0000-0002-4236-7906, University of Cambridge, autor de correspondencia), Raffaella Folli (0000-0001-5707-1043, Institute for Research in Social Sciences, University of Ulster, Jordanstown Campus, Room BA-05-014, Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 0QB, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen50
Número3
Páginas439-486
Fecha de publicación2019-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLinguistic Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0024-3892 • E-ISSN: 1530-9150
EditorialThe MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1162/ling_a_00315
OpenAlexW2885062832
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas47

In this article, we argue that a set of unexpected contrasts in the interpretation of clitic-left-dislocated indefinites in Greek and Italian derive from structural variation in the nominal syntax of the two languages. Greek resists nonreferential indefinites in clitic left-dislocation, resorting to the topicalization of an often bare noun for nonreferential topics. By contrast, clitic left-dislocation is employed in Italian for topics regardless of their definite/indefinite interpretation. We argue that this contrast is directly linked to the wide availability of bare nouns in Greek, which stems from a structural difference in the nominal syntax of the two languages. In particular, we hypothesize that Greek nominal arguments lack a D layer. Rather, they are Number Phrases. We situate this analysis in the context of Chierchia's (1998) typology of nominals. We argue that, on a par with Italian nouns, Greek nouns are [−arg, +pred]. However, they do not employ a syntactic head (D) for type-shifting to e . Rather, they resort to covert type-shifting, a hypothesis that is necessary to account for the distribution and interpretations of bare nouns in Greek, vis-à-vis other [−arg, +pred] languages like Italian and French

Clitic · Context (archaeology) · Contrast (vision) · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Noun · Syntax · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation