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This work discusses some aspects of the so-called “relaxed verb-second hypothesis” for Old Romance languages focusing on Old Italian data. Although the idea that Medieval Romance varieties displayed some kind of verb-second grammar is often accepted in the literature, careful consideration of the data and the predictions casts some doubts on this hypothesis and suggests pursuing a different road to account for word order phenomena in these varieties. The focus here is on verb-first main clauses, which result from merging a null element in the left periphery according to Wolfe’s (2015) influential work. If this approach is adopted, problems arise for the definition of the null categories that can occupy the left periphery of the clause: there is no motivation to postulate such elements unless a rule of obligatory pre-field occupation is independently justified, and the data speaks against such a rule. The question then arises whether a further weakened version of the relaxed V2 hypothesis is still preferable to a non-V2 analysis of Old Italian Grammar.

Starting from the applications of quantitative linguistics to Dante’s Commedia made in the mid-1960s, the article reviews the lexicographic activities of Tullio De Mauro. Considering the breadth and articulation of the scholar’s activities, the focus is concentrated on early Italian language and on his theories and researches that have crossed the resources of the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, and in particular the Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While in Modern Italian, V1 is mandatory in absolute constructions, no such restriction is operative in Old Italian. On the surface, such a fact could be interpreted as a sign of residual V-to-Comp movement in Modern Italian. However, it is not: In Old Italian, participles targeted a position lower than Comp and, hence, the V1 pattern of Modern Italian is an innovation rather than a residue from the earlier stage. The difference between the two grammars lies in the interaction of independent properties of Old Italian and Modern Italian: First, in Old Italian, two arguments can be case licensed because of the presence of a Tense Phrase in the participle clause. In Modern Italian, where no Tense Phrase is projected, nominative can only be licensed by focus as an instance of default case assignment. Second, a general change relating to information structure has as its consequence that a focused argument is realized post-verbally in Modern Italian, which explains the obligatory V1 pattern.

This paper deals with, in a diachronic perspective, the Italian verb-noun compounds of the type portalettere and covers the time span that goes from the Origins well into the beginnings of the Twentieth century. On the basis of a rich dataset drawn from diachronic corpora and lexicographic sources, the article presents the history of this word-formation process, emphasizing the semantic and categorial nature of these compounds. The main claim is that the current semantic variability (person, instrument, event, period of time etc.) has always been available in the linguistic history of Italian as well as, to a minor extent, the categorial ambiguity by which VN compounds also function as adjectival modifiers. It is shown that this last function is much of a diachronic innovation. This paper, which stems from the theoretical premises of Construction Morphology, reveals that the productivity of the Construction [V-N]A|N is due to both the semantic and formal flexibility shown from the earliest attestations of the language, and to the productivity of some semi-specified subschemas, which have served as models for the creation of new VN compounds, especially over the past few decades.

This paper provides a corpus-based analysis of compounding in Old Italian. The semantic and formal properties of compound words attested in Old Italian are described and discussed through the theoretical tools provided by Construction Morphology. The analysis confirms that compounding is exploited since the earliest attestations of the language. It reveals that Old Italian compounds are mostly right-headed endocentric or exocentric: particularly, endocentric [ADV-Y]Y, [A-N]N|A and exocentric [V-N]N are the most productive schemas. Moreover, this study highlights a significant influence of Latin on Italian compounding, whereby many Old Italian compounds are Latin loanwords and calques which served as a model for the creation of new native compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexicological and lexicographical studies on multiword expressions in Romance languages have significantly increased in recent years. Even though some attention has been paid to Multiwords functioning as adjectives and adverbs, the structural and the functional relation between them has not been clarified yet. Employing both a qualitative and quantitative approach, this corpus-based investigation aims at exploring the diatopic distribution and the evolution of Romance multiword lexemes having the form of a prepositional phrase and the function of an adjective or/and an adverb (or both functions). According to data taken from corpora of Latin, Old Italian, Old Spanish and Middle French, this contribution investigates the relationship between the different degrees of schematicity and the productivity of this kind of multiword lexemes in order to highlight the evolutional path and the diachronic/diatopic principles engaged in the multiword modifying system across the different Romance languages taken into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Etudes Romanes de Brno is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the synchronic competition and diachronic substitution of three Latin temporal expressions: tum, tunc ('at that time', 'then'), and later dumque (originally, 'while-and'), and its Old Italian outcome dunque ('then'). Besides providing a new path of development and a new etymology for Italian dunque, we describe in detail the steps by which these forms gradually replaced one another and examine the factors at play in their renewal, showing that such forms all display a similar inference-driven functional expansion from propositional to discourse-organizational meanings. However, their subsequent development led to a functional similarity that is only partial, as is often the case in semantic–pragmatic cycles. While discussing the nature of this cycle, we focus on the speaker's role in this type of change, which in our view can be summarized in the speaker's cyclical application of recurrent functional principles: phonetic efficiency, analogy, and regularity in semantic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistica Pragensia (Charles University Prague, Faculty of Arts) is the property of Charles University Prague, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents the project of an on-line atlas of Old Italian based on the corpus of the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano. The «points» on the atlas are the places which have testi significativi («significant texts», i.e. those which better represent the local variety). The forms are provided with different types of information: lexical (belonging to a lexical item of the corpus), morphosyntactic (inflexional categories) and historical-phonological (e.g. relationship of legno with Latin L‑, tonic Ǐ, -GN‑, -U). The atlas will help both the editor and the linguist: the first will find a grid which will assist him in localizing texts, the latter will have a tool to observe geolinguistic patterns or to reconstruct the system he is studying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at showing how today's databases could change the traditional relationship existing between Philology and historical Lexicography, with specific reference to Old Italian lexicography and OVI dictionary (TLIO) and databases. Through the analysis of some Old Italian words meaning 'beginning' (( in)cominciamento, ( in)comincianza, inizio), this paper presents a new philological method to manage the Corpus OVI extensive documentation: while traditional historical lexicography operates by identifying ancient occurrences of a particular word and, on this ground, by interpreting and defining their meaning, the «new» corpus-based (or, more likely, corpus-driven) historical lexicography can go further, placing that word inside the structure of ancient lexicon, that is, inferring from the documentation the distribution and the (possible) specificity of the lexeme. Relying on a study carried out by Cosimo Burgassi and by myself, this paper introduces some new interpretative categories targeting the study of words' (in the case in point, Romance words') history, such as «Rate of Connotation» ('quoziente connotativo') and «latent Latinism» ('latinismo latente'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work we consider the diachronic development of two distinct types of negative markers, those originally stemming from minimizers (m-negation) and those originally deriving from a negative quantifier (q-negation). We provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis that, despite appearances, they do not follow the same grammaticalization path. We claim that the distinct syntactic position of the two types of negation in the modern dialects depends on the distinct evolution path they have taken, which in turn depends on their original properties. While minimizers change their position during the grammaticalization cline, q-negation stays in the same position throughout the whole process. If this is correct, it means that Jespersen’s cycle is not syntactically homogenous and that the result of a postverbal negative marker can be achieved by means of various strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]