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