Multiple Agreement Constructions in Southern Italo-Romance. The Syntax of Sicilian Pseudo-Coordination

In the present thesis different configurations of Pseudo-Coordination are analysed. This is a monoclausal syntactic construction, formed by two finite verbs with an optional connector a between them (V1 a V2), which can be considered as an instance of the Multiple Agreement Constructions found in most southern Italo-Romance dialects. This thesis discusses the main parameters of micro-variation characterising the Pseudo-Coordination found in the Sicilian dialects: i) the criteria for the selection of the V1; ii) the Moods and the Tenses in which this construction can occur; iii) the criteria for the selection of the V2: iv) the hierarchy regulating the occurrence of the Persons (from 1sg to 3pl) in the different paradigms; v) the grammaticalisation of the V1 "go" with its phonetic erosion and desemanticisation. In the second part of the thesis, the first quantitative study dedicated to Pseudo-Coordination, conducted in Delia (Caltanissetta) with 70 participants during 2017, is presented

Strategies of Indefiniteness Marking in Central Sicilian—Evidence from the Dialect of Delia

This paper is meant as a contribution to the research project on variation and optionality in the determiner system in Italo-Romance, with novel data from the Sicilian dialect of Delia. The study is based on fieldwork interviews and the construction of a small corpus of 850 observations by 24 native speakers of Deliano (mean age: 36.37; age range: 19–72). The participants were asked to (i) describe in Deliano a 3 min videotape of an Italian speaking woman during her shopping session at a supermarket and (ii) talk about their own shopping routines in Deliano. These activities were designed mainly to detect the following strategies to express indefiniteness: (i) ART, i.e., a definite article with an indefinite interpretation; (ii) ZERO, a zero determiner for bare nouns; (iii) DI+ART, the so-called “partitive article”; (iv) pseudo-partitives such as ‘a bit of’; (v) the grammaticalised cardinal ‘two’; and (vi) the grammaticalised cardinal ‘four’. The data confirm (i) the preference for ZERO in negative episodic sentences in the past; (ii) the general lack of bare DI and DI+ART, and of certo ‘certain’ used as an indefinite; (iii) the use of different specialised forms of pseudo-partitive ‘a bit of’ in older speakers of Deliano; (iv) the neutralisation of this pseudo-partitive specialisation and the consequent emergence of some true optionality in younger speakers

Competing verbal constructions with functional TAKE in Bulgarian

This paper discusses the preliminary results of an online acceptability judgments questionnaire on some Bulgarian verbal periphrases featuring the functional verb vzemam ‘take’. The study was conceived to fill a gap in the literature about functional TAKE in Bulgarian, which has been known in previous work since Sandfeld (1900) but is still rather scarce and unsystematic. Three TAKE+V2 constructions are identified: i) a Multiple Agreement Construction featuring the connector da (TAKE daMAC); ii) a MAC featuring ˇce (TAKE ˇceMAC); iii) Pseudo-Coordination (of the type TAKE + i ‘and’ + V2). The participants are 157 native speakers (112 F, 45 M) with an age range of 18-80 (M = 43.63; SD = 13.92). The results of the questionnaire confirm the presence and the productivity of these constructions with functional TAKE in present-day Bulgarian. Moreover, they show that these constructions all share a monoclausal structure, but with some structural differences: V1 in the TAKE MACs is mainly restricted to the past tense, and V2 only occurs in the present, while in the iPseCo V1 and V2 share TAM features and can appear both in the present and in the past. From a semantic point of view, TAKE daMAC specializes for inchoativity, while TAKE ˇceMAC for mirativity. The iPseCo seems to be able to convey both meanings, but it is least preferred than the TAKE MACs

The Interpretation of Indefinites with Adnominal Adjectives in the Sicilian Dialects

Indefinite nominals can typically be modified by pre- or postnominal adjectives in Romance languages. With the exception of a small group of adjectives concerning physical or moral characteristics whose meaning changes according to their pre- or postnominal use, the position of an attributive adjective does not alter its meaning. However, prenominal adjectives in a Spanish indefinite trigger its specific interpretation, thus preventing its variable reading; the same phenomenon obtains also in Catalan. The aim of this paper is to discuss specific cases in some Sicilian dialects – mainly in the dialect of Delia (province of Caltanissetta) – in order to provide further evidence of the fact that prenominal evaluative adjectives force the specific interpretation of indefinites in Romance. Since Sicilian dialects do not typically display prenominal adjectives, this paper will therefore draw on elatives to check whether Sicilian shows a parallel restriction in the postnominal position

Il bilinguismo italiano-dialetto in Sicilia. Profilo sociolinguistico, nuove realtà comunicative e prospettive didattiche

The present volume aims at contributing to the ongoing discussion on the relationship between Italian and the Sicilian dialects, by updating it to the new communication dimension represented by Social Media, and the related increase of the written domain in daily digital interactions. The volume starts with a chapter on the technical terminology that is needed to address the question ‘lingua vs. dialetto’, which will justify the use of the term dilalico, à la Berruto, to describe the Italian sociolinguistic scenario. Chapter 2 offers an overview of the main European linguistic settings and discusses both the legal choices made by the Italian State regarding what varieties spoken in the Peninsula should be considered as minority languages to protect, and the normative reaction by the Sicilian regional government. Chapter 3 discusses those features that differentiate the Sicilian dialects from Standard Italian, sometimes characterising the regional Italian spoken in Sicily. It is crucial that these features are carefully taken into account in order to foster metalinguistic abilities and activate those cognitive advantages documented in different bilingual contexts. Chapter 4 deals with the issue of writing in dialect. Texting on Social Media is almost exclusively the domain of Italian, considering the persisting difficulties in promoting a written code that could be shared by most users. This is detrimental for dilalic speakers whose overall opportunities to use their dialects in such an important context diminish remarkably. Chapter 5 provides a discussion of the fact that awareness of the linguistic properties of the dialects could contribute to better control the competence in Italian, and to learn foreign languages more easily by capitalising on what dilalic speakers know about their dialects. The volume ends with some educational considerations that also hold for the other dilalic situations in Italy

The Inflected Construction in the dialects of Sicily: Parameters of micro-variation

Sicilian dialects display an instance of verbal Pseudo-Coordination (V1[TAM.Agr]a V2[TAM.Agr]), here referred to as the Inflected Construction or IC (cf. Cardinaletti & Giusti 2001, 2003), that can occur in very different configurations. Aim of this paper is to discuss the following parameters of micro-variation, by providing new data from recent fieldwork: (i) the restriction of the IC to some V2s; (ii) the possibility for the IC to occur across moods and tenses and to display complete paradigms for person features; (iii) the reduction of go as V1, and of other possible V1s, to a prefix-like invariable form. In the paper, three major types of IC are identified: Type 1 IC is only possible in some persons of the indicative present and in the 2sg of the imperative; Type 2 IC features the extension of the paradigm to other simple tenses of the indicative; Type 3 IC displays a full-fledged paradigm in the indicative (3 simple tenses), subjunctive and imperative

Pseudo-Coordination and Multiple Agreement Constructions

Verbal Pseudo-Coordination (as in English ‘go and get’) has been described for a number of individual languages, but this is the first edited volume to emphasize this topic from a comparative perspective, and in connection to Multiple Agreement Constructions more generally. The chapters include detailed analyses of Romance, Germanic, Slavic and other languages. These contributions show important cross-linguistic similarities in these constructions, as well as their diversity, providing insights into areas such as the morphology-syntax and syntax-semantics interfaces, dialectal variation and language contact. This volume establishes Pseudo-Coordination as a descriptively important and theoretically challenging cross-linguistic phenomenon among Multiple Agreement Constructions and will be of interest for specialists in individual languages as well as typologists and theoreticians, serving as a foundation to promote continued research

A Protocol for the Inflected Construction in Sicilian Dialects

Most Sicilian dialects display a monoclausal construction with a functional verb (usually of motion), followed by the linking element a and a lexical verb called Inflected Construction by Cardinaletti, Giusti (2001, 2003). This construction shows a high degree of cross-linguistic variation. The aim of the paper is to propose the protocols in the sense of Giusti, Zegrean (2015) to conduct fieldwork in this area. Protocol Linguistics is a metamodel of linguistic research that can be shared by linguists of different theoretical persuasion, can be accessible to non-linguists, and is meant to interface with a number of disciplines and environments such as social sciences and political planning, neuro-psychology and language rehabilitation, pedagogy and language education. The protocols consist of simple table-charts with the horizontal axis listing the empirical environments to be searched, e.g. the languages to be compared, and the vertical axis listing (clusters of) properties, named features, to be valued as +/- according to whether they are present or absent in each environment. The features relevant to the investigation on the Inflected Construction rely on preliminary work by Di Caro (2015), which highlights a finer grained variation than the one presented in previous literature (a.o. Cardinaletti, Giusti 2001, 2003, and Cruschina 2013). In the spirit of the principles-and-parameters approach, the protocols for the Inflected Construction are clustered around two main dimensions, each involving clusters of properties: (i) the lexical restrictions on the functional and/or the lexical verb; (ii) the person, tense and mood restrictions of the verbal paradigm

Reconstruction of interactions in the ProtoDUNE-SP detector with Pandora

International audienceThe Pandora Software Development Kit and algorithm libraries provide pattern-recognition logic essential to the reconstruction of particle interactions in liquid argon time projection chamber detectors. Pandora is the primary event reconstruction software used at ProtoDUNE-SP, a prototype for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment far detector. ProtoDUNE-SP, located at CERN, is exposed to a charged-particle test beam. This paper gives an overview of the Pandora reconstruction algorithms and how they have been tailored for use at ProtoDUNE-SP. In complex events with numerous cosmic-ray and beam background particles, the simulated reconstruction and identification efficiency for triggered test-beam particles is above 80% for the majority of particle type and beam momentum combinations. Specifically, simulated 1 GeV/$c$ charged pions and protons are correctly reconstructed and identified with efficiencies of 86.1$\pm0.6$% and 84.1$\pm0.6$%, respectively. The efficiencies measured for test-beam data are shown to be within 5% of those predicted by the simulation

Reconstruction of interactions in the ProtoDUNE-SP detector with Pandora

International audienceThe Pandora Software Development Kit and algorithm libraries provide pattern-recognition logic essential to the reconstruction of particle interactions in liquid argon time projection chamber detectors. Pandora is the primary event reconstruction software used at ProtoDUNE-SP, a prototype for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment far detector. ProtoDUNE-SP, located at CERN, is exposed to a charged-particle test beam. This paper gives an overview of the Pandora reconstruction algorithms and how they have been tailored for use at ProtoDUNE-SP. In complex events with numerous cosmic-ray and beam background particles, the simulated reconstruction and identification efficiency for triggered test-beam particles is above 80% for the majority of particle type and beam momentum combinations. Specifically, simulated 1 GeV/$c$ charged pions and protons are correctly reconstructed and identified with efficiencies of 86.1$\pm0.6$% and 84.1$\pm0.6$%, respectively. The efficiencies measured for test-beam data are shown to be within 5% of those predicted by the simulation