N morphology and its interpretation : the neuter in Central Italian varieties and its implications
Franco, Ludovico (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Manzini, M. Rita (Università degli Studi di Firenze)
Savoia, Leonardo M. (Università degli Studi di Firenze)

Date:	2015
Abstract:	We characterize Romance inflectional class morphology in Nouns as endowed with a semantic content, providing evidence about its active involvement at the syntaxsemantic interface. We argue that the so-called neuter of Central Italian dialects involves coding of the mass/count distinction, which can in turn be interpreted as the reflex of a more primitive property, opposes non-individual content to instances of individual denotation. Indeed the -o 'neuter' inflection of Central Italian varieties is compatible not only with mass nouns but also with eventive contents and with the invariable inflections found with perfect participles of unergative/transitive verbs. We show that mass vs. count semantic content is available in other Indo-European languages and in genetically unrelated languages through nominal class morphology supporting the idea that nominal class is a classifier.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Nominal class ; Gender ; Agreement ; Neuter ; Mass/count distinction
Published in:	Isogloss, Special Issue (2015) , p.41-67 (Articles) , ISSN 2385-4138

Adreça alternativa: https://raco.cat/index.php/isogloss/article/view/304705
Adreça original: https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v1-2015-si-franco-manzini-savoia
DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.14

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