Michele Loporcaro
Biographic Data
| ID | 121798 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michele Loporcaro |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michele |
| FAMILY NAME | Loporcaro |
| SIGNATURE | LOPORCARO M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1711-2303 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The two senses of etymology
This article challenges the widespread textbook claim that “etymology boasts a venerable history of its own” (Malkiel), which implies that the history of etymology predates that of linguistics. On the contrary, it is argued that etymology, defined as “the search for the relationships—formal and semantic — that link a word with another unit that historically precedes it and from which it derives” (Zamboni), is a scientific discipline with a much s…
More on the collapse of contrastive vowel length in late Latin
This article reexamines a thorny and much-debated issue of Latin and Romance studies, i.e. the loss of contrastive vowel length, which Latin had but which did not survive into any Romance language. Among the crucial evidence for assessing the chronology and exact course of the demise of Latin vowel length are the metalinguistic testimonies of grammarians. These have recently received accurate treatment and have been invoked by some (most notably,…
Truncated vocatives in Romanesco
This paper addresses vocative truncation in Romanesco (Italo-Romance), which has been described as conditioned by a host of constraints at different structural levels. We crowdsourced the data collection with an online questionnaire devised to ask the three research questions whether the acceptability of truncation depends on (a) grammatical number, (b) the individual lexical items, and (c) speaker's age. Respondents' ratings on a 5-point Likert …
Re-taking the field
Italy was among the first countries in Europe to be heavily impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19. Northern Italy and Lombardy, in particular, were the most affected areas. In September 2021, the team of “AIS, the digital turn” (AISdt), a project whose objectives include collecting data in 50 locations in Italy, across Lombardy and Piedmont, resumed in-person data collection. Given the field of the investigation and the profile required for the in…
Contact-Induced Complexification in the Gender System of Istro-Romanian
The paper provides the first description of the borrowing of Croatian collective numerals into Northern Istro-Romanian and explores the consequences of this borrowing for the morphosyntax of the recipient language. It argues that the collective numerals under examination, which are specified as nominative plural feminine in the Slavic model, took on a different structural specification in the Romance replica, in a way that led to a restructuring …
In and Around the Balkans
The languages of the Balkans are a rich source of data on contact-induced language change. The result of a centuries long process of lexical and structural convergence has been referred to as a ‘sprachbund’. While widely applied, this notion has, however, increasingly been questioned with respect to its usefulness. Addressing the linguistic makeup of the Balkan languages, the notion of sprachbund is critically assessed. It is shown that a) the Ba…
The third gender of Old Italian
We demonstrate that Old Italian had a three-gender system within which the neuter still qualified as a fully fledged gender value. To substantiate this claim, we adduce evidence showing that (a) Old Italian had three distinct sets of controllers, each of which selected a separate agreement pattern; (b) to each one of those three controller sets, including the neuter, nouns were assigned belonging to different productive inflectional classes and (…
A new strategy for progressive marking and its implications for grammaticalization theory
The variety of Sicilian spoken in Pantelleria has developed a progressive construction which involves pronominal subject clitics. This is striking in many respects. Firstly, on a Romance scale, subject clitics are usually regarded as characteristic for varieties spoken north of Florence. Secondly, in none of the central Romance dialects where subject clitics are known to occur do these convey progressive meaning. The latter seems to be unusual on…
Syncretism and Neutralization in the Marking of Romance Object Agreement
The chapter focuses on the loss of distinctions observed in the past participle paradigms across Romance. Different instances of loss of distinctions are classified into syncretism, neutralization, and uninflectedness, following Baerman et al. (2005). From inspection of Romance dialect variation, it comes out that the feminine singular is the most syncretism‐resistant form, which results from combination of the tendencies for number to be syncret…
On triple auxiliation in Romance
Romance languages divide into three classes, as far as perfective auxiliation is concerned: as well as languages showing a binary contrast (e.g., French) and languages showing no contrast (e.g., Spanish), several varieties exist in which auxiliation displays three-way choices. Previous research on Romance auxiliaries has failed to recognize this empirical fact due to its focus on auxiliaries as morpho-lexical items, rather than on auxiliation as …
The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome
This paper is a condensed presentation of the phonetics and phonology of Standard Italian, compared to the most prestigious local accents, viz. those of Florence, Milan and Rome. Historically based on the Florentine pronunciation, and traditionally identified with it, Standard Italian is nowadays used by trained speakers such as stage actors and (but less and less so) radio and TV speakers. The present paper aims at depicting the most salient fea…
The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome
This paper is a condensed presentation of the phonetics and phonology of Standard Italian, compared to the most prestigious local accents, viz. those of Florence, Milan and Rome. Historically based on the Florentine pronunciation, and traditionally identified with it, Standard Italian is nowadays used by trained speakers such as stage actors and (but less and less so) radio and TV speakers. The present paper aims at depicting the most salient fea…
On triple auxiliation in Romance
Romance languages divide into three classes, as far as perfective auxiliation is concerned: as well as languages showing a binary contrast (e.g., French) and languages showing no contrast (e.g., Spanish), several varieties exist in which auxiliation displays three-way choices. Previous research on Romance auxiliaries has failed to recognize this empirical fact due to its focus on auxiliaries as morpho-lexical items, rather than on auxiliation as …
In and Around the Balkans
The languages of the Balkans are a rich source of data on contact-induced language change. The result of a centuries long process of lexical and structural convergence has been referred to as a ‘sprachbund’. While widely applied, this notion has, however, increasingly been questioned with respect to its usefulness. Addressing the linguistic makeup of the Balkan languages, the notion of sprachbund is critically assessed. It is shown that a) the Ba…
The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome
This paper is a condensed presentation of the phonetics and phonology of Standard Italian, compared to the most prestigious local accents, viz. those of Florence, Milan and Rome. Historically based on the Florentine pronunciation, and traditionally identified with it, Standard Italian is nowadays used by trained speakers such as stage actors and (but less and less so) radio and TV speakers. The present paper aims at depicting the most salient fea…
On triple auxiliation in Romance
Romance languages divide into three classes, as far as perfective auxiliation is concerned: as well as languages showing a binary contrast (e.g., French) and languages showing no contrast (e.g., Spanish), several varieties exist in which auxiliation displays three-way choices. Previous research on Romance auxiliaries has failed to recognize this empirical fact due to its focus on auxiliaries as morpho-lexical items, rather than on auxiliation as …
Syncretism and Neutralization in the Marking of Romance Object Agreement
The chapter focuses on the loss of distinctions observed in the past participle paradigms across Romance. Different instances of loss of distinctions are classified into syncretism, neutralization, and uninflectedness, following Baerman et al. (2005). From inspection of Romance dialect variation, it comes out that the feminine singular is the most syncretism‐resistant form, which results from combination of the tendencies for number to be syncret…
A new strategy for progressive marking and its implications for grammaticalization theory
The variety of Sicilian spoken in Pantelleria has developed a progressive construction which involves pronominal subject clitics. This is striking in many respects. Firstly, on a Romance scale, subject clitics are usually regarded as characteristic for varieties spoken north of Florence. Secondly, in none of the central Romance dialects where subject clitics are known to occur do these convey progressive meaning. The latter seems to be unusual on…
The third gender of Old Italian
We demonstrate that Old Italian had a three-gender system within which the neuter still qualified as a fully fledged gender value. To substantiate this claim, we adduce evidence showing that (a) Old Italian had three distinct sets of controllers, each of which selected a separate agreement pattern; (b) to each one of those three controller sets, including the neuter, nouns were assigned belonging to different productive inflectional classes and (…
Contact-Induced Complexification in the Gender System of Istro-Romanian
The paper provides the first description of the borrowing of Croatian collective numerals into Northern Istro-Romanian and explores the consequences of this borrowing for the morphosyntax of the recipient language. It argues that the collective numerals under examination, which are specified as nominative plural feminine in the Slavic model, took on a different structural specification in the Romance replica, in a way that led to a restructuring …
In and Around the Balkans
The languages of the Balkans are a rich source of data on contact-induced language change. The result of a centuries long process of lexical and structural convergence has been referred to as a ‘sprachbund’. While widely applied, this notion has, however, increasingly been questioned with respect to its usefulness. Addressing the linguistic makeup of the Balkan languages, the notion of sprachbund is critically assessed. It is shown that a) the Ba…
Re-taking the field
Italy was among the first countries in Europe to be heavily impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19. Northern Italy and Lombardy, in particular, were the most affected areas. In September 2021, the team of “AIS, the digital turn” (AISdt), a project whose objectives include collecting data in 50 locations in Italy, across Lombardy and Piedmont, resumed in-person data collection. Given the field of the investigation and the profile required for the in…
More on the collapse of contrastive vowel length in late Latin
This article reexamines a thorny and much-debated issue of Latin and Romance studies, i.e. the loss of contrastive vowel length, which Latin had but which did not survive into any Romance language. Among the crucial evidence for assessing the chronology and exact course of the demise of Latin vowel length are the metalinguistic testimonies of grammarians. These have recently received accurate treatment and have been invoked by some (most notably,…
Truncated vocatives in Romanesco
This paper addresses vocative truncation in Romanesco (Italo-Romance), which has been described as conditioned by a host of constraints at different structural levels. We crowdsourced the data collection with an online questionnaire devised to ask the three research questions whether the acceptability of truncation depends on (a) grammatical number, (b) the individual lexical items, and (c) speaker's age. Respondents' ratings on a 5-point Likert …
The two senses of etymology
This article challenges the widespread textbook claim that “etymology boasts a venerable history of its own” (Malkiel), which implies that the history of etymology predates that of linguistics. On the contrary, it is argued that etymology, defined as “the search for the relationships—formal and semantic — that link a word with another unit that historically precedes it and from which it derives” (Zamboni), is a scientific discipline with a much s…
Linguistics (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · History (6 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (6 works) · Romance languages (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Linguistics and language evolution (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Romance (4 works)