Papers by Ludovico Franco
Language Sciences, 2013
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We argue that instrumentals and comitatives are the mirror image of dative/genitive obliques. We ... more We argue that instrumentals and comitatives are the mirror image of dative/genitive obliques. We propose that both sets of adpositions/cases are elementary predicates, expressing a part-whole (inclusion/possession) relation. Comitatives/instrumentals reverse the direction of the relation with respect to datives/genitives; genitives/datives embed the whole/possessor,
instrumentals/comitatives embed the part/possessum. In other words the genitive, dative and instrumental obliques result from the internal differentiation of a single core content – namely the
part-whole content expressed in fairly uncontroversial fashion by the genitive. We apply this proposal to triadic verb constructions, where the comitative/instrumental alternates with dative. We
extend our discussion to dative/instrumental syncretism (eventually including DOM objects) and to ergative alignments, addressing the most widespread patterns of syncretism of the ergative morpheme, with either instrumentals or genitives/datives.
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In this brief work we will address the very unusual behaviour of subject clitics in Pantiscu. I... more In this brief work we will address the very unusual behaviour of subject clitics in Pantiscu. Indeed, they encode a progressive aspectual value (Loporcaro 2012). To tentatively account for their puzzling shape, we will propose that subject clitics can be associated to aspectual features, broadly following Manzini and Savoia (2002). To explain the non-compositional behaviour of the of the Pantiscu progressive periphrasis, we will resort to a phrasal spell-out tool, assuming that the subject clitic plus the lexical verb are spelled-out (as a whole) as ProgP. Finally to account for the fact that an aspectual particle can agree with the external argument in phi-features we will assume, following recent work by Kalin & van Urk (to appear), that an imperfective projection (here Prog) can act as a phi-probe.
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The so-called ergativity split between perfect and progressive tenses is observed both in languag... more The so-called ergativity split between perfect and progressive tenses is observed both in languages with a specialized ergative case (Punjabi) and in languages without (Kurdish). We propose that perfects are states/results corresponding to a VP projection; external arguments are introduced by means of an oblique case, namely an elementary functional head/predicate Q(⊆) (‘oblique’) or Loc(⊆) (‘ergative’) saying that the event is ‘included by’, ‘located at’ the argument. In a VP predicate the inflection picks up the internal argument, determining phi-feature identity (‘agreement’) with DPs lexicalizing it. Progressives have a more complex organization of the predicate/event, where the progressive head Asp projects a functional layer and can introduce the external argument, determining nominative type agreement. Punjabi further presents a canonical 1/2P vs. 3P Person split. Our proposal yields the syntactic Person split as a result of the intrinsic ability of 1/2P to serve as ‘location-of-event’.
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In this paper, we will provide novel evidence for the availability of a sub-clausal syntax of ‘co... more In this paper, we will provide novel evidence for the availability of a sub-clausal syntax of ‘corrective’ adversative coordination - along the lines of Toosarvandani (2013) and contra Vicente (2010) – coming (a) from agreement facts in Italian, (b) the existence of languages with ‘symmetrical’ patterns of ‘correctives’ and (c) the behavior of languages which do not use specialized lexical items to encode fine-grained semantic distinctions among the realm of coordinate structures. Specifically we will show that the evidence collected here supports and updates Toosarvandani (2013)’s claim that basic correctives (vs. anchored correctives) are able to combine sub-clausal constituents.
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I will provide here a possible syntactic characterization of (a subset) of so-called degrammatica... more I will provide here a possible syntactic characterization of (a subset) of so-called degrammaticalization processes, basing on the case of the diachronic evolution of presso/pressi (near/at, in) in Italian. Moreover, with an empirical study on the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano (OVI) corpus, I will support Svenonius’ (2006) idea of Axial Part as an independent category in the lexicon (and not a mere spatial subset of relational nouns), giving a new kind of evidence, that is, diachronic evidence, to such claim. I will also point out the quite strange behaviour of the inherently plural (relational) noun pressi with respect to the issue of mass/count distinction.
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In this article, we focus the empirical discussion of linkers on Albanian articles and Iranian ez... more In this article, we focus the empirical discussion of linkers on Albanian articles and Iranian ezafes (Persian, Kurdish). We argue that Albanian and Iranian linkers are not copulas or case assigners. On the contrary, linkers (at least in the languages considered) are in fact closer to what is usually called agreement. Specifically the parallel is with clitic pronouns/determiners of the Romance languages which are also known to enter doubling (i.e. agreement) structures. We argue that so-called agreement morphology is interpretable, namely as a low-level saturation of argument slots. The Agree rule (minimal search and match) builds sets of elements concurring to the saturation of the same argument slot (chains sui generis). It is possible that some of the elements that have been called linkers correspond to of/the copula. We sketch an analysis of what of is in English - namely an elementary predicate (a copula if desired); genitive/oblique case in Albanian and Kurdish are the morphological level counterpart of of. Nevertheless many linkers, including in non-Indo-European languages, display the same morphological, distributional and interpretive properties that lead us to identify Albanian/Iranian linkers with a type of agreement.
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in Acta Linguistica Hungarica 60(3) [ISSN 1216-8076] - September 2013 (non-final draft)
In this paper, I will present a cross-linguistic analysis of the syntax of items signalling tempo... more In this paper, I will present a cross-linguistic analysis of the syntax of items signalling temporal distance. Basing on insight form cartography and nanosyntax, I will shown that the mechanism of Phrasal Spell-out (and the Superset Principle) can elegantly explain why in many language 'before' and 'ago' meanings are expressed with the same word. Above all, I will present a previously unnoticed *ABA constraint (cf. Caha 2009; Bobaljik 2012) on lexical spans in the domain of temporal distance. The *ABA pattern will be crucial to account for possible counterexamples of Haspelmath's (1997) fairly robust descriptive generalization, which states that forms expressing spatial relations of front and back regularly express, respectively, anteriority and posteriority across languages when they are 'shifted' from space to time (namely, before ≈ in front; after ≈ back).
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In: Language and Information Society 19, 59-100 (ISSN 1598-1886). [Special issue on cognitive science and language, eds. Michael Barrie and Sook Whan Cho], Sogang University Press: Seoul. (non-final draft)
"We report the case of a classic agrammatic speaker of Italian in repeating locative Figure/Groun... more "We report the case of a classic agrammatic speaker of Italian in repeating locative Figure/Ground relations via complex prepositions consisting of a locative axial preposition and a simple preposition in light of recent theoretical accounts of prepositions and the existing literature on prepositions in aphasia. The repetition data showed greater rates of omission for simple than axial prepositions, and a trade-off between the inclusion of the Figure and the Axial preposition. Grounds tended to be preserved. These results are
unexpected on accounts that simple prepositions are more functional in nature than axial prepositions and argue for an analysis in which axial prepositions can take on a functional grammatical role. To account for the repetition data we propose that the agrammatic
processor is unable to fill and retain functional Axial Parts. Hence, it links Figure and Ground through a reduced configuration, mediated by the simple preposition operating as a relational item and not a functional category. The clinical data presented here add to the empirical data set against which to test the validity of finer-grained distinctions among prepositions and compare different theoretical views of the status of prepositions."
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In this paper we will provide a formal characterization of the category Dative. Basing on data fr... more In this paper we will provide a formal characterization of the category Dative. Basing on data from a wide range of languages (Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Albanian, Romance), we will show that Dative is the superficial case normally associated with animacy/definiteness in Indo-European languages, independently of the particular morphology employed to spell out dative (for instance inflectional or prepositional). We will show that there is a syntactic category Dative coinciding with the morphological one and encompassing both thematic and D (i.e. definiteness/animacy) Dative. We will provide a characterization of thematic dative as an elementary predicate introducing a part-whole (i.e. possession) relation, arguing that there is no need to conceive the D-dative/oblique but as an instance of this same elementary predicate/ operator.
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"The purpose of this work is to illustrate an extremely rare linguistic feature, namely the overt... more "The purpose of this work is to illustrate an extremely rare linguistic feature, namely the overt present of a root complementizer in assertive/indicative (i.e. unmarked) matrix clauses, of the Sogdian language, an Eastern Middle Iranian Language once spoken in a region located in the valley of rivers Zaravshan and Kashkadarya (roughly corresponding to the territory of modern day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan).
This linguistic fact is very interesting because it represents an overt evidence of the principle of endocentricity inferred in the Generative tradition since the early 80s. In comparative perspective, this uncommon feature of the Sogdian language may be associated to the mechanism of para-hypotaxis, previously studied in many different Romance languages (e.g. Old French, Old Italian, Old Catalan) and recently discovered in other genetically unrelated languages (e.g. Swahili, Zamucoan languages)."
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In: International Journal of Mind, Brain and Cognition, 3(2), 33-65 (ISSN 0976-3112), Bahri Publications: New Delhi. (non final draft)
In this work we present a study of verb syntax in a case of Logopenic Primary Progressive Aphasia... more In this work we present a study of verb syntax in a case of Logopenic Primary Progressive Aphasia, trying to empirically check two radical claims about Lexicon and syntax within contemporary generative linguistics: a) verbs are a closed class of light verbs (Kayne 2009); b) argument structure is a matter of syntactically driven operations (incorporation / conflation), in a constructionalist fashion (Hale and Keyser 1993; 2002). The results, based on a corpus of spontaneous speech collected during a period of three months, suggest that neurolinguistic works on noun-verb distinction within impaired populations should account for the existence of different verbal classes and above all for a functional vs. lexical distinction as a crucial variable.
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In this brief paper, I will show that an account based on the idea of Phrasal Spell-out can elega... more In this brief paper, I will show that an account based on the idea of Phrasal Spell-out can elegantly account for some puzzles regarding VN compounds in Romance languages, interpreted here as 'lexicalized modifying clauses'. I will advance the hypothesis of a rebooting mechanism in extended projections as an alternative to the postulation of silent items to account for the ambiguous nature of VN words that can appear either as noun or adjectives/adverbials. With such an approach no compounding rules are involved and we do not need to resort to categorial underpecification to account for the ‘VN facts’.
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The present study deals with sentence repetition in MB, an Italian patient with mixed transcortic... more The present study deals with sentence repetition in MB, an Italian patient with mixed transcortical aphasia. In preliminary testing, MB spontaneously resisted accurate repetition when presented with sentences featuring morphosyntactic violations (see Davis et al., 1978). MB also managed to repeat all the proposed phrasal chunks, even in complex sentences. Interestingly, MB tended to move the constituents with the violation (always oblique arguments/adjuncts) at the beginning of the sentence or in another non-canonical position (e.g. dislocating adjuncts immediately before verbs). Thus, he selectively performed "adjunct scrambling". A detailed experimental task confirmed that MB only moved adjoined constituents or facultative complements. Interestingly, most of the scrambled constituents were prosodically-marked by pitch-peaks as contrastive foci. We argue that MB resorts to scrambling as a syntactic strategy. In doing so, he activates projections that encode information related to the interface between syntax and discourse-pragmatics.
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"The aim of this study is to experimentally investigate Evaluative Morphology (EM) in an Italian ... more "The aim of this study is to experimentally investigate Evaluative Morphology (EM) in an Italian agrammatic speaker. In the neurolinguistic literature, to our
knowledge, there are no previous attempts to systematically analyze possible deficits, specifically concerning EM in agrammatic speakers.
Previous theoretical works argued that Italian EM should be considered
as a specific type of lexical process, different from both inflection and
derivation (Scalise, 1984). In recent years, there have been many
works devoted to the study of EM from a syntactic viewpoint (e.g. Cinque
2006, 2011; Ott 2011, De Belder, Faust and Lampitelli 2009, 2012). Data from agrammatic production are crucial for checking the validity of a syntactic approach to evaluative markers. The results show that our agrammatic (Crossed) aphasic speaker doesn’t have a specific deficit for EM. This fact seems to weaken a syntactic approach to EM, where e.g. evaluative markers are treated as functional heads within an extended projection. In fact, given that agrammatic speakers are standardly assumed to be impaired with the production of morphosyntactic functional items (see e.g. Berndt & Caramazza, 1980; Miceli et al., 1989), words with evaluative morphemes appears to be stored in the lexicon and not syntactically derived."
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The aim of this brief paper is to describe what prima facie seems a typological rarum in Old Ital... more The aim of this brief paper is to describe what prima facie seems a typological rarum in Old Italian. Specifically, we address the syntax of the temporal adverbial per addietro (lit. for at-back), which was commonly used in Old Florentine texts to encode the meaning [BEFORE]. Thus, it goes against the accepted generalization that spatial relations of front and back regularly express, respectively, anteriority and posteriority across languages when they are ‘shifted’ from space to time. We will give a possible syntactic explanation based on cartographic insights (Cinque, 2010; Svenonius, 2012) into the 'layered' configuration of spatial (and temporal) prepositions.
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Papers by Ludovico Franco
instrumentals/comitatives embed the part/possessum. In other words the genitive, dative and instrumental obliques result from the internal differentiation of a single core content – namely the
part-whole content expressed in fairly uncontroversial fashion by the genitive. We apply this proposal to triadic verb constructions, where the comitative/instrumental alternates with dative. We
extend our discussion to dative/instrumental syncretism (eventually including DOM objects) and to ergative alignments, addressing the most widespread patterns of syncretism of the ergative morpheme, with either instrumentals or genitives/datives.
unexpected on accounts that simple prepositions are more functional in nature than axial prepositions and argue for an analysis in which axial prepositions can take on a functional grammatical role. To account for the repetition data we propose that the agrammatic
processor is unable to fill and retain functional Axial Parts. Hence, it links Figure and Ground through a reduced configuration, mediated by the simple preposition operating as a relational item and not a functional category. The clinical data presented here add to the empirical data set against which to test the validity of finer-grained distinctions among prepositions and compare different theoretical views of the status of prepositions."
This linguistic fact is very interesting because it represents an overt evidence of the principle of endocentricity inferred in the Generative tradition since the early 80s. In comparative perspective, this uncommon feature of the Sogdian language may be associated to the mechanism of para-hypotaxis, previously studied in many different Romance languages (e.g. Old French, Old Italian, Old Catalan) and recently discovered in other genetically unrelated languages (e.g. Swahili, Zamucoan languages)."
knowledge, there are no previous attempts to systematically analyze possible deficits, specifically concerning EM in agrammatic speakers.
Previous theoretical works argued that Italian EM should be considered
as a specific type of lexical process, different from both inflection and
derivation (Scalise, 1984). In recent years, there have been many
works devoted to the study of EM from a syntactic viewpoint (e.g. Cinque
2006, 2011; Ott 2011, De Belder, Faust and Lampitelli 2009, 2012). Data from agrammatic production are crucial for checking the validity of a syntactic approach to evaluative markers. The results show that our agrammatic (Crossed) aphasic speaker doesn’t have a specific deficit for EM. This fact seems to weaken a syntactic approach to EM, where e.g. evaluative markers are treated as functional heads within an extended projection. In fact, given that agrammatic speakers are standardly assumed to be impaired with the production of morphosyntactic functional items (see e.g. Berndt & Caramazza, 1980; Miceli et al., 1989), words with evaluative morphemes appears to be stored in the lexicon and not syntactically derived."
instrumentals/comitatives embed the part/possessum. In other words the genitive, dative and instrumental obliques result from the internal differentiation of a single core content – namely the
part-whole content expressed in fairly uncontroversial fashion by the genitive. We apply this proposal to triadic verb constructions, where the comitative/instrumental alternates with dative. We
extend our discussion to dative/instrumental syncretism (eventually including DOM objects) and to ergative alignments, addressing the most widespread patterns of syncretism of the ergative morpheme, with either instrumentals or genitives/datives.
unexpected on accounts that simple prepositions are more functional in nature than axial prepositions and argue for an analysis in which axial prepositions can take on a functional grammatical role. To account for the repetition data we propose that the agrammatic
processor is unable to fill and retain functional Axial Parts. Hence, it links Figure and Ground through a reduced configuration, mediated by the simple preposition operating as a relational item and not a functional category. The clinical data presented here add to the empirical data set against which to test the validity of finer-grained distinctions among prepositions and compare different theoretical views of the status of prepositions."
This linguistic fact is very interesting because it represents an overt evidence of the principle of endocentricity inferred in the Generative tradition since the early 80s. In comparative perspective, this uncommon feature of the Sogdian language may be associated to the mechanism of para-hypotaxis, previously studied in many different Romance languages (e.g. Old French, Old Italian, Old Catalan) and recently discovered in other genetically unrelated languages (e.g. Swahili, Zamucoan languages)."
knowledge, there are no previous attempts to systematically analyze possible deficits, specifically concerning EM in agrammatic speakers.
Previous theoretical works argued that Italian EM should be considered
as a specific type of lexical process, different from both inflection and
derivation (Scalise, 1984). In recent years, there have been many
works devoted to the study of EM from a syntactic viewpoint (e.g. Cinque
2006, 2011; Ott 2011, De Belder, Faust and Lampitelli 2009, 2012). Data from agrammatic production are crucial for checking the validity of a syntactic approach to evaluative markers. The results show that our agrammatic (Crossed) aphasic speaker doesn’t have a specific deficit for EM. This fact seems to weaken a syntactic approach to EM, where e.g. evaluative markers are treated as functional heads within an extended projection. In fact, given that agrammatic speakers are standardly assumed to be impaired with the production of morphosyntactic functional items (see e.g. Berndt & Caramazza, 1980; Miceli et al., 1989), words with evaluative morphemes appears to be stored in the lexicon and not syntactically derived."