We investigate the morphosyntax of qualitative binominal constructions (QBCs) in a Southern Italo-Romance language from the Apulian town of San Marco in Lamis. QBCs are complex noun phrases like ‘a jewelN1 of a villageN2’, appearing here prepositionally (with the preposition də, ‘of’, allowing definites, indefinites, and demonstratives) and non-prepositionally (only allowing definites with definite articles and not proper names). We propose that in the latter, a categorial match in the determiner layer, which we call ‘match D’, relates N1 and (...) N2. N1 is embedded as a noun, allowing for: 1) the recursive DP strategy of non-prepositional genitives, and 2) the extension of this mechanism to QBCs. This leads to the impossibility of syntactic extraction, which we connect to the concept of phase. With non-denominal N1s, N1’s article is treated as a head-agreeing adjectival linker, forming a constituent with the modifier but agreeing with the head. A phrase is interpreted as a QBC if N1 and N2 share the same number features and if the features of N1 do not allow for it to be interpreted as the possessum of N2 . We also discuss external agreement with the construction, presenting data supporting the relevance of the [+HUMAN] feature for agreement relations. (forthcoming, Italian Journal of Linguistics). (shrink)

This work aims at an initial description of prepositionless genitives in the Romance variety of San Marco in Lamis, spoken in the Southern Italian region of Apulia. The construction will be compared with other Romance, Semitic, Albanian, and Iranian varieties whereby the expression of possession is connected to the presence of D elements, or to morphology stemming from them. The paper deals, in particular, with the behaviour of the construction with elements such as definite and indefinite articles, demonstratives, proper names, (...) and with how pre-nominal adjectival modification of genitives and post-nominal adjectival modification of heads can only occur in the prepositional kind of the construction. This is also the case with demonstratives preceding heads and genitives in the form raised nominals. It will be seen that genitives are only interpreted as such when they are non-raised, i.e. when they are articled. The pre-genitival article is thus understood to be a pivotal element in the interpretation of the second DP as genitival. (shrink)

This work aims to analyze complex noun phrases of the qualitative binominal kind (an N of an N) in a Southern Italo–Romance language, namely Apulian. The principle of compositionality – even if it represents a good working hypothesis for syntactic analysis – faces several challenges with linguistic expressions such as idioms (with which binominal qualitatives share several properties), whose meaning is not yielded compositionally (Szabò, 2004). The data under analysis here are particularly interesting for two main reasons. The first (...) pertains to the nature of the preposition, and whether it is an a priori specified element depending on the syntactic embedding; two main working hypotheses are found: Den Dikken (2006) posits two different derivations, one for binominal qualitative of and one for genitive of. On the other hand, Kayne (1994) posits a unitary derivation for both instances of the preposition. The second reason pertains to the problem of the overall interpretation of the phrase, i.e., an intersectional interpretation of the predicate and the subject of the predication, and the focus/topic subdivision in the phrase (Villalba, 2007): the interpretation depends on the marked order of the predicate with respect to the subject. Given that N1 is a predicate and usually an adjectivized noun or a nominalized adjective and that in southern Italo–Romance only few adjectives can precede a noun, cases in which the predicate precedes the noun can be considered as displaying a marked order. Even though the case of the preposition might seem a challenge for compositionality, it will be shown that a proper characterization of such an element confirms that compositionality can still account for instances such as those of binominal qualitatives. (shrink)

In this paper, which discusses data from Gargano Apulian Italo-Romance, I propose that prepositional and non-prepositional genitives are fundamentally two different types of phrases, and that the interpretation of a non-prepositional noun as the possessor is not due to a silent preposition or head-modifier inversion, but rather to an agreement mechanism taking place between the modifier and its head. We propose that, just as a genitive can agree with its head for gender and number features so it can for (...) definiteness, and that agreement for definiteness yields a genitival interpretation of the non-prepositional noun. I.e., definiteness can externalize the syntactic relation between head and modifier. We also propose that in this Apulian variety, non-prepositional genitives are syntactic phases (Chomsky 2001), and that the same holds for non-prepositional ‘qualitative’ predicative phrases in the same language. This would explain the impossibility of accessing the phrase through syntactic operations such as extraction. DOI 10.1111/1467-968X.12229 . (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is an analysis of agreement in relation to genitival constructions. It proposes that the Apulian non-prepositional enitives of San Marco in Lamis can be described as regulated by a definiteness agreement mechanism manifesting itself in the necessity of articled heads (excluding vocatives) and genitival nouns, coupled with an adjacency requirement which limits the realization of post-nominal modifiers of the head in a post-genitival position, where they might only refer to the genitive noun. This work (...) thus proposes that such agreement for definiteness is the same holding in Romanian non-al genitives which result in the linker construction when agreement is disrupted. In chapter 1 we thus introduce Kartvelian genitives by Suffixaufnahme which notoriously represent a genitive-head noun morphological agreement phenomenon. Plank (1995) also shows that in a series of genitives, Suffixaufnahme shows up only on the last one, demonstrating that when it comes to agreement in genitives, local dynamics of sorts are often at stake (as it happens with the Costruct State). In 2 we move to linkers; linkers have been connected to agreement in Suffixaufnahme genitives at least since Plank (1995) and later works such as Larson and Yamakido (2006), Manzini et al (2016), and Manzini (2018), according to which linkers can be assimilated to agreement. In fact, in synthetic systems such as Romanian and Aromanian, Albanian and Arbëresh, and Kurdish varieties, linkers agree for φ with either the head or the genitive noun. Giurgea and Dobrovie-Sorin (2013: 126) further show that in Romanian non-linker constructions possessives agree for case with the head noun. In linker constructions, agreement for case is not present: it’s the linker itself which agrees with the head noun, this time for φ. Chapter 3 deals with genitival modification in Hebrew and a number of Arabic varieties. It proposes that the pseudoprepositions found in Arabic varieties are nouns in the Construct State. This was previously proposed for Palestinian Arabic in Mohammad (1999), which also shows that such elements agree for φ with the modified noun. 3.2 takes into account the Semitic preposition l-, dealing with the question of whether this lement can be characterized as possessive and locative as it happens for Romance a. 4 analyzes Apulian non-prepositional genitives and proposes as anticipated that the necessity of articled nouns in the construction is to be linked to an agreement relation taking place via D. Lastly, 5 subsumes the conclusions of this work. (shrink)