Diachronic Development in Isolation: The Loss of V2 Phenomena in Cimbrian

This paper deals with the syntactic development of Cimbrian, a German dialect, which was spoken for centuries in some enclaves in northern Italy. In particular, we argue that the ‘dismantlement’ of the V2 phenomenon is connected with a change concerning the ‘nature’ of specific word order patterns: from ‘allowed’ V2 exceptions to ‘unmarked’ and frequent constructions, i.e., from hanging topic (freies Thema) in WH clause to ‘new’ left dislocation modalities, which finally bring to generalized V3 in the declarative clause

A binary system of complementizers in Cimbrian relative clauses

The system of Cimbrian relative clauses manifests itself in a complex scenario: two different complementizers occur in this context: i) the ‘autochthonous’ (Germanic) bo, cognate of Southern German wo, and ii) the ‘allochthonous’ ke, borrowed from Italian (che), which is gradually spreading. In our paper we provide empirical evidence for a crucial specialization of both complementizers: the former shows up only in restrictive relative clauses, the latter in both restrictive and non-restrictive relatives, giving rise to a binary system. In our analysis we aim to explain the binary system of Cimbrian relative complementizers directly addressing the general discussion about relative clauses, showing once more the relevance of both linguistic contact and microvariation for the theory of grammar

Fortune and Decay of Lexical Expletives in Germanic and Romance along the Adige River

Lexical expletives can be divided into two main classes: (i) CP expletives required by the V2 constraint and, hence, by the necessity to lexicalize the position on the left of the inflected verb and (ii) TP expletives connected with the negative value of the pro-drop parameter and, therefore, with the necessity to lexicalize the ’structural‘ subject position, specifically, [Spec, TP]. The latter can, in turn, be divided into two subclasses: impersonal subjects and positional expletives, which occur with postverbal/low subjects and extraposed subject clauses. While CP expletives only appear in Germanic varieties that maintain V2, the subclassification of TP expletives yields interesting results when comparing Cimbrian and the Venetan varieties in Nord-East Italy, where the gradual disappearance of the positional expletive in free inversion structures and the residual maintenance of impersonal subjects from North to South along the Adige River confirms the distinction between two classes of subject expletives; furthermore, the resilience of impersonal subjects and their distribution in the northwestern part of the area under consideration sheds light on the role of language contact which is confirmed along the same axis—but crucially in the opposite direction—by the increasing employment of cleft constructions in WH-clauses replacing enclisis (i.e.,: pronominal subject inversion with the finite verb)

Feature Borrowing in Language Contact

In this paper, we consider mood selection in embedded clauses by focusing on a Germanbased minority language, Cimbrian, which is spoken in a northern Italian enclave. Mood selection in Cimbrian relies on the presence of two different complementizers, az and ke (the latter being borrowed from Romance varieties), each of which selectively require a specific mood. Az selects the mood subjunctive in modal sentences introduced by non-factive verbs, whereas ke co-occurs with the indicative in purely declarative clauses introduced by factive and semi-factive verbs. However, this binary distribution is challenged in the two following contexts, and it is precisely at this point that feature borrowing comes into play: (i) with the verb gloam ‘to believe/to think’, the expected binary pattern appears (irrealis az + subjunctive and the realis ke + indicative), but, crucially, a third construction emerges, namely ke + subj.; (ii) surprisingly, az + subj. displays some ‘gaps’ in its paradigm, specifically in the first person, which appeared in the data we collected via translation tasks from Italian into Cimbrian. Both phenomena shed light on how language contact works, not in terms of structural borrowing but rather in terms of the transfer of the specific features of a given lexical item

Continuum linguistico e contatto fra variet\ue0 germaniche e romanze

Le aree dialettali sono spesso caratterizzate da differenze strutturali minime (microvariazione) che determinano un continuum linguistico dove variet\ue0 geograficamente adiacenti risultano abbastanza simili fra di loro e pi\uf9 diverse man mano che la distanza geografica aumenta. Quando una variet\ue0 si trova per\uf2 in una situazione di contatto linguistico (adiacenza geografica fra due aree linguistiche diverse), il continuum naturale che si crea all'interno di variet\ue0 appartenenti alla stessa famiglia linguistica (p.es. le lingue germaniche) potrebbe essere interrotto per l'influenza della lingua di contatto (p.es. una lingua romanza). In questo lavoro presentiamo degli esempi di continuum linguistico che emergono nelle variet\ue0 germaniche delle Alpi centro-meridionali. Il nostro approccio si distacca da un'impostazione caratterizzata da confini netti e isole linguistiche. Assumiamo al contrario che sia possibile, in linea di principio, non solo un continuum intralinguistico, all'interno delle variet\ue0 germaniche o romanze, ma anche un continuum interlinguistico che copre sia variet\ue0 germaniche che romanze. Descriveremo il continuum linguistico con le nozioni della tradizione dialettologica tedesca. Applichiamo la tipologia introdotta alla situazione linguistica lungo la linea del Brennero che comprende sia le variet\ue0 germaniche dei dialetti bavaresi del Tirolo, il m\uf2cheno e il cimbro, che le variet\ue0 romanze dei dialetti veneti e dei dialetti veneto-lombardi del Trentino

Laser system generating 250-mJ bunches of 5-GHz repetition rate, 12-ps pulses.

We report on a high-energy solid-state laser based on a master-oscillator power-amplifier system seeded by a 5-GHz repetition-rate mode-locked oscillator, aimed at the excitation of the dynamic Casimir effect by optically modulating a microwave resonator. Solid-state amplifiers provide up to 250 mJ at 1064 nm in a 500-ns (macro-)pulse envelope containing 12-ps (micro-)pulses, with a macro/micropulse format and energy resembling that of near-infrared free-electron lasers. Efficient second-harmonic conversion allowed synchronous pumping of an optical parametric oscillator, obtaining up to 40 mJ in the range 750-850 nm

L' identità linguistica cimbra sotto la lente della filologia germanica

Il presente contributo si propone di offrire al lettore un solido orientamento linguistico storico sulla tradizione linguistica cimbra. Verificheremo che l’analisi diacronica e comparativa del fenomeno linguistico ci consentiranno di stabilire oggettivamente le fondamentali discriminanti che definiscono la specificità e l’identità del cimbro all’interno del vasto panorama linguistico germanico. Ciò permetterà, tra l’altro, di fornire una risposta storicamente corretta al consueto interrogativo sulla natura del rapporto che intercorre tra il cimbro e il tedesco. La trattazione sarà argomentata attraverso esempi significativi dei fenomeni che s’intendono dimostrare o porre in evidenza. Essa si propone d’illustrare gli obiettivi e il genere di risposte che l’approccio storico-linguistico alla questione cimbra può fornir

A Curated Database for Linguistic Research: The Test Case of Cimbrian Varieties

In this paper we present the definition of a conceptual approach for the information space entailed by a multidisciplinary and collaborative project, \u201cCimbrian as a test case for synchronic and diachronic language variation\u201d, which provides linguists with a test bed for formal hypotheses concerning human language. Aims of the project are to collect, digitize and tag linguistic data from the German variety of Cimbrian - spoken in three areas of northern Italy: Giazza (VR), Luserna (TN), and Roana (VI) - and to make available on-line a valuable and innovative linguistic resource for the in-depth study of Cimbrian. The task is addressed by a multidisciplinary team of linguists and computer scientists who, combining their competence, aim to make available new tools for linguistic analysis

E-cadherin expression and blunted interferon response in blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm

Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) is an aggressive neoplasm derived from plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs). In this study, we investigated by immunohistochemical analysis the expression of E-cadherin (EC) on pDCs in reactive lymph nodes and tonsils, bone marrow, and in BPDCN. We compared the expression of EC in BPDCN to that in leukemia cutis (LC) and cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE), the latter typically featuring pDC activation. In BPDCN, we also assessed the immunomodulatory activity of malignant pDCs through the expression of several type I interferon (IFN-I) signaling effectors and downstream targets, PD-L1/CD274, and determined the extent of tumor infiltration by CD8-expressing T cells. In reactive lymph nodes and tonsils, pDCs expressed EC, whereas no reactivity was observed in bone marrow pDCs. BPDCN showed EC expression in the malignant pDCs in the vast majority of cutaneous (31/33 cases, 94%), nodal, and spleen localizations (3/3 cases, 100%), whereas it was more variable in the bone marrow (5/13, 38,5%), where tumor cells expressed EC similarly to the skin counterpart in 4 cases and differently in other 4. Notably, EC was undetectable in LC (n=30) and in juxta-epidermal pDCs in CLE (n=31). Contrary to CLE showing robust expression of IFN-I-induced proteins MX1 and ISG5 in 20/23 cases (87%), and STAT1 phosphorylation, BPDCN biopsies showed inconsistent levels of these proteins in most cases (85%). Expression of IFN-I-induced genes, IFI27, IFIT1, ISG15, RSAD2, and SIGLEC1, was also significantly (P\u3c0.05) lower in BPDCN as compared with CLE. In BPDCN, a significantly blunted IFN-I response correlated with a poor CD8+T-cell infiltration and the lack of PD-L1/CD274 expression by the tumor cells. This study identifies EC as a novel pDC marker of diagnostic relevance in BPDCN. The results propose a scenario whereby malignant pDCs through EC-driven signaling promote the blunting of IFN-I signaling and, thereby, the establishment of a poorly immunogenic tumor microenvironment