for their illuminating comments and encouraging support. Special thanks go to Elisabeth Selkirk f... more for their illuminating comments and encouraging support. Special thanks go to Elisabeth Selkirk for her seminal and invaluable comments at the beginning of my research. Thanks are due also to
L'opera, comprese tutte le sue parti, è tutelata dalla legge sui diritti d'autore. Sono vietate e... more L'opera, comprese tutte le sue parti, è tutelata dalla legge sui diritti d'autore. Sono vietate e sanzionate (se non espressamente autorizzate) la riproduzione in ogni modo e forma (comprese le fotocopie, la scansione, la memorizzazione elettronica) e la comunicazione (ivi inclusi a titolo esemplificativo ma non esaustivo: la distribuzione, l'adattamento, la traduzione e la rielaborazione, anche a mezzo di canali digitali interattivi e con qualsiasi modalità attualmente nota od in futuro sviluppata). Le fotocopie per uso personale del lettore possono essere effettuate nei limiti del 15% di ciascun fascicolo dietro pagamento alla SIAE del compenso previsto dall'art. 68, commi 4 e 5, della legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633. Le fotocopie effettuate per finalità di carattere professionale, economico o commerciale o comunque per uso diverso da quello personale, possono essere effettuate a seguito di specifica autorizzazione rilasciata da CLEARedi, Centro Licenze e Autorizzazioni per le Riproduzioni Editoriali
In Italian, main questions introduced by wh-elements like dove (‘where’) disallow preverbal subje... more In Italian, main questions introduced by wh-elements like dove (‘where’) disallow preverbal subjects, while main yes-no questions and wh-questions introduced by elements like perché (‘why’) allow preverbal subjects (Rizzi, 2001). In this paper, we investigate the extent to which the availability of a pre-verbal subject in Italian interrogatives is modulated by the structure in which it is found (main vs. embedded) and the presence of different interrogative elements (perché, dove, yes/no operators). Our results show that the pattern observed for main questions is mirrored in embedded questions: when the discourse disallows a topic or narrow focus interpretation of the subject, pre- verbal subjects are preferred and rated more highly than post- verbal subjects in both yes-no and perché-questions. Dove- questions display the opposite pattern. Capitalizing on Belletti’s (2001) analysis of subject-inversion in declarative, we speculate that the licensing of subject-inversion in interrogatives is modulated by syntactic context. In questions that allow preverbal subjects, post-verbal subjects must be licensed under either a narrow focus or a topic interpretation, while this is not the case in questions that disallow preverbal subjects (e.g., dove-questions). To investigate whether, in addition to being influenced by the syntactic contexts in which they are found, the placement and interpretation of subjects in Italian interrogatives can be influenced by the syntactic properties of a competing grammar, we elicited acceptability judgments from native speakers of Italian who differ in terms of their English exposure and everyday use. We observe a selective of English pressure on main but not in embedded contexts. We speculate that the pressure exerted by the L2 more strongly impacts on discourse-related, rather than core syntactic properties.
Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, 2011
Informationally Given phrases following an instance of focus are generally realized in a compress... more Informationally Given phrases following an instance of focus are generally realized in a compressed pitch range and are assumed to lack prosodic prominences above the word level. In this paper, we address the question of the metrical representation of postfocal constituents in Tuscan Italian. The results of a production experiment show that, despite their being realized with a low and flat F0 contour, postfocal constituents are not extrametrical, but are phrased and assigned metrical prominences of phrasal level. The impact of our results on the prosodic representation of Italian is discussed.
In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criter... more In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criterial framework proposed by Rizzi (2004c) with two empirical problems. Firstly, I will consider a peculiar Italian construction (see (1)b), previously described and analysed by Benincà (1988:137-139 and 2001) and
RIASSUNTO In questo lavoro abbiamo investigato le proprieta prosodiche (metriche e intonative) ch... more RIASSUNTO In questo lavoro abbiamo investigato le proprieta prosodiche (metriche e intonative) che caratterizzano le frasi con Focus Contrastivo (FC) nella periferia sinistra della frase (Rizzi, 1997). Per valutare la portata di differenti configurazione sintattiche e interpretative, abbiamo costruito e sottoposto ad analisi acustica un corpus di frasi lette (italiano parlato a Siena), contenente frasi con FC e, quale mezzo di confronto, frasi in Focus Ampio (FA) e con Topic dislocati a sinistra con ripresa clitica (Topic) (Cinque, 1990). Indipendentemente dalla presenza di un ordine superficiale dei costituenti in grado di disambiguare l’interpretazione contrastiva, all’attivazione della proiezione di Focus corrispondono sistematicamente un insieme di caratteristiche prosodiche che non sono confinate al costituente focalizzato ma che caratterizzano tutta l’articolazione FC-Presupposizione. Sia l’analisi intonativa che metrica, tanto percettiva che quantitativa, ci hanno portato a c...
Optional movement is problematic in two respects. First, recent syntactic analyses assume that th... more Optional movement is problematic in two respects. First, recent syntactic analyses assume that the displacement of a constituent is triggered by the need to satisfy a formal requirement, which is implemented in terms of features. According to this view, in (1B′) the direct object bears a [focus] feature, which must be licensed in an appropriate scopal position in the left periphery of the clause (Rizzi 1997). But such featural requirements are assumed to be mandatory, and therefore, the optionality observed in (1B)/(1B′) is unexpected. A similar problem emerges with respect to the interpretation of focus. In the Alternative Semantics approach (Rooth 1992), the focus constituent is interpreted in situ, whereas in one version of the Structured Meaning approach (Krifka 2006), the focus constituent must be displaced in order to create a partitioned structure that can be transparently mapped into a structured meaning (§3.3): from either perspective, optional movement is once again unexpe...
This paper discusses the fronting of a focal constituent to a clause-initial position which, in v... more This paper discusses the fronting of a focal constituent to a clause-initial position which, in various languages, is associated with an import of unexpectedness. We provide prosodic and syntactic evidence from Italian showing that this phenomenon has distinctive grammatical properties with respect to other instances of ‘focus fronting’. We argue that the fronted constituent bears narrow focus, and that the unexpectedness import conveys that the asserted proposition is less likely than at least one distinct focus alternative (cf. Grosz 2011). We characterize this import as a conventional implicature, and we argue that likelihood is interpreted with respect to an informative modal base and a stereotypical ordering source which are shared by the conversational community, thus allowing the negotiation of a shared evaluation. In order to incorporate evaluative meanings in the discourse context, we adopt and extend the componential view of the context proposed by Farkas & Bruce (2010).
In this paper, we discuss the phenomenon of subject inversion in Italian wh-questions. Experiment... more In this paper, we discuss the phenomenon of subject inversion in Italian wh-questions. Experimental evidence is provided for the distinction pointed out in Rizzi (2001) between direct questions introduced by perché ‘why’ and wh-questions introduced by other bare wh-phrases with respect to subject inversion. In particular, we show that why-questions display information-structure motivated subject inversion, while other wh-operators obligatorily require the subject to occur postverbally. Contrasting the respective focus structure, we then offer a semantic explanation of the two types of subject inversion: in why-questions a narrow focus is semantically motivated and, thus, possible, whereas in the other wh-questions the presence of a narrow focus would yield a clash in the calculation of question-answer congruence. We finally propose an implementation of this asymmetry in cartographic terms.
In this paper we discuss postverbal subjects in Italian direct wh-questions. We show that, in thi... more In this paper we discuss postverbal subjects in Italian direct wh-questions. We show that, in this context, subject inversion is not determined by the information-structural, semantic, or pragmatic conditions that rule ‘free’ subject inversion in declarative clauses: it is rather the consequence of a purely syntactic mechanism, namely, successive cyclic wh-movement, which directly affects the syntactic position of the subject, as well as the prosody of the sentence (in particular, the distribution of the nuclear pitch accent). We propose that the movement of the wh-element to the local CP inhibits the position SubjP, which hosts preverbal subjects in Italian. This syntactic restriction, we argue, is due to a case of relativized minimality: given that the preverbal subject would count as an intervener that blocks wh-movement, SubjP is not projected in the syntactic structure of wh-questions and the subject must obligatorily occur postverbally.
In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criter... more In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criterial framework proposed by Rizzi (2004c) with two empirical problems. Firstly, I will consider a peculiar Italian construction (see (1)b), previously described and analysed by Beninca (1988:137-139 and 2001) and Beninca and Poletto (2004), which seems to mix up the interpretative and prosodic properties of contrastive focus and the syntactic ones of ClLDed topics (Beninca 1988, Cinque 1990, Rizzi 1997). In (1)b, the fronted direct object (henceforth DO) is characterized by contrastive focus prosody and interpretation and it is resumed by a clitic.
A left peripheral focus and a wh-element cannot co-occur in main interrogatives in Italian, where... more A left peripheral focus and a wh-element cannot co-occur in main interrogatives in Italian, whereas they can marginally co-occur in indirect questions. Moreover, the acceptability of the relevant configurations is further modulated by the grammatical function of the focal element, with a focalized indirect object more acceptable than a focalized direct object. In this paper we establish these generalizations experimentally through a controlled acceptability experiment. We discuss the theoretical underpinning of the observed pattern by tracing back this unusual kind of main-embedded asymmetry to plausible principles regulating the interface properties of focus and wh-constructions. We then extend the comparative dimension to Japanese. We propose that certain intervention effects observed in the literature may be amenable to the same explanatory ingredients at work in the incompatibility between focus and whin Italian; moreover certain apparent cases of double cleft in Japanese are an...
The Italian language is characterized by an extremely strong phonetic and phonological variation ... more The Italian language is characterized by an extremely strong phonetic and phonological variation that differentiates the language across space, communicative situations, social groups and socio-economic classes, and means of communication (Berruto 2010, 2012). In this chapter, we consider the phonetic and phonological variation at the intonational and prosodic level as it is found in the varieties of Italian, that is, in the official language of Italy as spoken by speakers with different regional accents. In particular, we focus on varieties of Italian spoken in most of the areas identified in previous dialectological studies. One of the possible cartographic representations of the distribution and differentiation of the dialetti spoken in Italy is shown in Fig. 5.1. As the map shows, a usual distinction is made between the Romance dialetti spoken northern than the line connecting La Spezia and Rimini (Walter von Wartburg (1936 [1950]) that reflects a bundle if isoglosses differenti...
Ad Andrea, per tutto quello che ci ha insegnato, trasmesso e cucinato * We would like to thank Va... more Ad Andrea, per tutto quello che ci ha insegnato, trasmesso e cucinato * We would like to thank Valentina Bianchi and Lucia Pozzan for invaluable help and discussion. Giuliano Bocci's research was supported by the ERC Advanced Grant 340297 SynCart. 1 Note that the two generalizations do not hold for Italian yes/no-questions. Even if it used to be a feature of Old Italian (cf. Munaro 2010), modern Italian yes/no-questions do not require subject inversion, either in the matrix or in an embedded clause; nor do they display any special prosodic pattern with respect to the placement of NPA.
for their illuminating comments and encouraging support. Special thanks go to Elisabeth Selkirk f... more for their illuminating comments and encouraging support. Special thanks go to Elisabeth Selkirk for her seminal and invaluable comments at the beginning of my research. Thanks are due also to
L'opera, comprese tutte le sue parti, è tutelata dalla legge sui diritti d'autore. Sono vietate e... more L'opera, comprese tutte le sue parti, è tutelata dalla legge sui diritti d'autore. Sono vietate e sanzionate (se non espressamente autorizzate) la riproduzione in ogni modo e forma (comprese le fotocopie, la scansione, la memorizzazione elettronica) e la comunicazione (ivi inclusi a titolo esemplificativo ma non esaustivo: la distribuzione, l'adattamento, la traduzione e la rielaborazione, anche a mezzo di canali digitali interattivi e con qualsiasi modalità attualmente nota od in futuro sviluppata). Le fotocopie per uso personale del lettore possono essere effettuate nei limiti del 15% di ciascun fascicolo dietro pagamento alla SIAE del compenso previsto dall'art. 68, commi 4 e 5, della legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633. Le fotocopie effettuate per finalità di carattere professionale, economico o commerciale o comunque per uso diverso da quello personale, possono essere effettuate a seguito di specifica autorizzazione rilasciata da CLEARedi, Centro Licenze e Autorizzazioni per le Riproduzioni Editoriali
In Italian, main questions introduced by wh-elements like dove (‘where’) disallow preverbal subje... more In Italian, main questions introduced by wh-elements like dove (‘where’) disallow preverbal subjects, while main yes-no questions and wh-questions introduced by elements like perché (‘why’) allow preverbal subjects (Rizzi, 2001). In this paper, we investigate the extent to which the availability of a pre-verbal subject in Italian interrogatives is modulated by the structure in which it is found (main vs. embedded) and the presence of different interrogative elements (perché, dove, yes/no operators). Our results show that the pattern observed for main questions is mirrored in embedded questions: when the discourse disallows a topic or narrow focus interpretation of the subject, pre- verbal subjects are preferred and rated more highly than post- verbal subjects in both yes-no and perché-questions. Dove- questions display the opposite pattern. Capitalizing on Belletti’s (2001) analysis of subject-inversion in declarative, we speculate that the licensing of subject-inversion in interrogatives is modulated by syntactic context. In questions that allow preverbal subjects, post-verbal subjects must be licensed under either a narrow focus or a topic interpretation, while this is not the case in questions that disallow preverbal subjects (e.g., dove-questions). To investigate whether, in addition to being influenced by the syntactic contexts in which they are found, the placement and interpretation of subjects in Italian interrogatives can be influenced by the syntactic properties of a competing grammar, we elicited acceptability judgments from native speakers of Italian who differ in terms of their English exposure and everyday use. We observe a selective of English pressure on main but not in embedded contexts. We speculate that the pressure exerted by the L2 more strongly impacts on discourse-related, rather than core syntactic properties.
Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, 2011
Informationally Given phrases following an instance of focus are generally realized in a compress... more Informationally Given phrases following an instance of focus are generally realized in a compressed pitch range and are assumed to lack prosodic prominences above the word level. In this paper, we address the question of the metrical representation of postfocal constituents in Tuscan Italian. The results of a production experiment show that, despite their being realized with a low and flat F0 contour, postfocal constituents are not extrametrical, but are phrased and assigned metrical prominences of phrasal level. The impact of our results on the prosodic representation of Italian is discussed.
In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criter... more In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criterial framework proposed by Rizzi (2004c) with two empirical problems. Firstly, I will consider a peculiar Italian construction (see (1)b), previously described and analysed by Benincà (1988:137-139 and 2001) and
RIASSUNTO In questo lavoro abbiamo investigato le proprieta prosodiche (metriche e intonative) ch... more RIASSUNTO In questo lavoro abbiamo investigato le proprieta prosodiche (metriche e intonative) che caratterizzano le frasi con Focus Contrastivo (FC) nella periferia sinistra della frase (Rizzi, 1997). Per valutare la portata di differenti configurazione sintattiche e interpretative, abbiamo costruito e sottoposto ad analisi acustica un corpus di frasi lette (italiano parlato a Siena), contenente frasi con FC e, quale mezzo di confronto, frasi in Focus Ampio (FA) e con Topic dislocati a sinistra con ripresa clitica (Topic) (Cinque, 1990). Indipendentemente dalla presenza di un ordine superficiale dei costituenti in grado di disambiguare l’interpretazione contrastiva, all’attivazione della proiezione di Focus corrispondono sistematicamente un insieme di caratteristiche prosodiche che non sono confinate al costituente focalizzato ma che caratterizzano tutta l’articolazione FC-Presupposizione. Sia l’analisi intonativa che metrica, tanto percettiva che quantitativa, ci hanno portato a c...
Optional movement is problematic in two respects. First, recent syntactic analyses assume that th... more Optional movement is problematic in two respects. First, recent syntactic analyses assume that the displacement of a constituent is triggered by the need to satisfy a formal requirement, which is implemented in terms of features. According to this view, in (1B′) the direct object bears a [focus] feature, which must be licensed in an appropriate scopal position in the left periphery of the clause (Rizzi 1997). But such featural requirements are assumed to be mandatory, and therefore, the optionality observed in (1B)/(1B′) is unexpected. A similar problem emerges with respect to the interpretation of focus. In the Alternative Semantics approach (Rooth 1992), the focus constituent is interpreted in situ, whereas in one version of the Structured Meaning approach (Krifka 2006), the focus constituent must be displaced in order to create a partitioned structure that can be transparently mapped into a structured meaning (§3.3): from either perspective, optional movement is once again unexpe...
This paper discusses the fronting of a focal constituent to a clause-initial position which, in v... more This paper discusses the fronting of a focal constituent to a clause-initial position which, in various languages, is associated with an import of unexpectedness. We provide prosodic and syntactic evidence from Italian showing that this phenomenon has distinctive grammatical properties with respect to other instances of ‘focus fronting’. We argue that the fronted constituent bears narrow focus, and that the unexpectedness import conveys that the asserted proposition is less likely than at least one distinct focus alternative (cf. Grosz 2011). We characterize this import as a conventional implicature, and we argue that likelihood is interpreted with respect to an informative modal base and a stereotypical ordering source which are shared by the conversational community, thus allowing the negotiation of a shared evaluation. In order to incorporate evaluative meanings in the discourse context, we adopt and extend the componential view of the context proposed by Farkas & Bruce (2010).
In this paper, we discuss the phenomenon of subject inversion in Italian wh-questions. Experiment... more In this paper, we discuss the phenomenon of subject inversion in Italian wh-questions. Experimental evidence is provided for the distinction pointed out in Rizzi (2001) between direct questions introduced by perché ‘why’ and wh-questions introduced by other bare wh-phrases with respect to subject inversion. In particular, we show that why-questions display information-structure motivated subject inversion, while other wh-operators obligatorily require the subject to occur postverbally. Contrasting the respective focus structure, we then offer a semantic explanation of the two types of subject inversion: in why-questions a narrow focus is semantically motivated and, thus, possible, whereas in the other wh-questions the presence of a narrow focus would yield a clash in the calculation of question-answer congruence. We finally propose an implementation of this asymmetry in cartographic terms.
In this paper we discuss postverbal subjects in Italian direct wh-questions. We show that, in thi... more In this paper we discuss postverbal subjects in Italian direct wh-questions. We show that, in this context, subject inversion is not determined by the information-structural, semantic, or pragmatic conditions that rule ‘free’ subject inversion in declarative clauses: it is rather the consequence of a purely syntactic mechanism, namely, successive cyclic wh-movement, which directly affects the syntactic position of the subject, as well as the prosody of the sentence (in particular, the distribution of the nuclear pitch accent). We propose that the movement of the wh-element to the local CP inhibits the position SubjP, which hosts preverbal subjects in Italian. This syntactic restriction, we argue, is due to a case of relativized minimality: given that the preverbal subject would count as an intervener that blocks wh-movement, SubjP is not projected in the syntactic structure of wh-questions and the subject must obligatorily occur postverbally.
In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criter... more In this paper, I will confront the split CP model (Rizzi 1997 and subsequent work) and the criterial framework proposed by Rizzi (2004c) with two empirical problems. Firstly, I will consider a peculiar Italian construction (see (1)b), previously described and analysed by Beninca (1988:137-139 and 2001) and Beninca and Poletto (2004), which seems to mix up the interpretative and prosodic properties of contrastive focus and the syntactic ones of ClLDed topics (Beninca 1988, Cinque 1990, Rizzi 1997). In (1)b, the fronted direct object (henceforth DO) is characterized by contrastive focus prosody and interpretation and it is resumed by a clitic.
A left peripheral focus and a wh-element cannot co-occur in main interrogatives in Italian, where... more A left peripheral focus and a wh-element cannot co-occur in main interrogatives in Italian, whereas they can marginally co-occur in indirect questions. Moreover, the acceptability of the relevant configurations is further modulated by the grammatical function of the focal element, with a focalized indirect object more acceptable than a focalized direct object. In this paper we establish these generalizations experimentally through a controlled acceptability experiment. We discuss the theoretical underpinning of the observed pattern by tracing back this unusual kind of main-embedded asymmetry to plausible principles regulating the interface properties of focus and wh-constructions. We then extend the comparative dimension to Japanese. We propose that certain intervention effects observed in the literature may be amenable to the same explanatory ingredients at work in the incompatibility between focus and whin Italian; moreover certain apparent cases of double cleft in Japanese are an...
The Italian language is characterized by an extremely strong phonetic and phonological variation ... more The Italian language is characterized by an extremely strong phonetic and phonological variation that differentiates the language across space, communicative situations, social groups and socio-economic classes, and means of communication (Berruto 2010, 2012). In this chapter, we consider the phonetic and phonological variation at the intonational and prosodic level as it is found in the varieties of Italian, that is, in the official language of Italy as spoken by speakers with different regional accents. In particular, we focus on varieties of Italian spoken in most of the areas identified in previous dialectological studies. One of the possible cartographic representations of the distribution and differentiation of the dialetti spoken in Italy is shown in Fig. 5.1. As the map shows, a usual distinction is made between the Romance dialetti spoken northern than the line connecting La Spezia and Rimini (Walter von Wartburg (1936 [1950]) that reflects a bundle if isoglosses differenti...
Ad Andrea, per tutto quello che ci ha insegnato, trasmesso e cucinato * We would like to thank Va... more Ad Andrea, per tutto quello che ci ha insegnato, trasmesso e cucinato * We would like to thank Valentina Bianchi and Lucia Pozzan for invaluable help and discussion. Giuliano Bocci's research was supported by the ERC Advanced Grant 340297 SynCart. 1 Note that the two generalizations do not hold for Italian yes/no-questions. Even if it used to be a feature of Old Italian (cf. Munaro 2010), modern Italian yes/no-questions do not require subject inversion, either in the matrix or in an embedded clause; nor do they display any special prosodic pattern with respect to the placement of NPA.
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