TY - GEN
T1 - Existential Constructions in Early Italo-Romance Vernaculars
AU - Ciconte, Francesco Maria
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - In this paper I claim that not all existential pro-forms are locative bydefinition. I examined a corpus of early Italo-Romance texts from the 13th to the16th century and noticed that in Tuscan the pro-form ci (or vi) cannot co-occurwith a locative phrase within the clause; this would corroborate Freeze’s (1992)view that existentials are locative. However, in other Italo-Romance varieties(Sicilian, Campanian and Roman), the pro-form and the locative phrase can cooccur.It can therefore be said that whereas in Tuscan the pro-form appears to bethe spell-out of a locative argument, in Sicilian, Campanian and Roman, as wellas in Modern Italian, it can be said to be a marker of existentiality which joins with the copula to spell out an existential predicate (Bentley 2006).
AB - In this paper I claim that not all existential pro-forms are locative bydefinition. I examined a corpus of early Italo-Romance texts from the 13th to the16th century and noticed that in Tuscan the pro-form ci (or vi) cannot co-occurwith a locative phrase within the clause; this would corroborate Freeze’s (1992)view that existentials are locative. However, in other Italo-Romance varieties(Sicilian, Campanian and Roman), the pro-form and the locative phrase can cooccur.It can therefore be said that whereas in Tuscan the pro-form appears to bethe spell-out of a locative argument, in Sicilian, Campanian and Roman, as wellas in Modern Italian, it can be said to be a marker of existentiality which joins with the copula to spell out an existential predicate (Bentley 2006).
M3 - Conference contribution
T3 - Proceedings of the Oxford Postgraduate Conference LingO 2007
BT - Proceedings of the Oxford Postgraduate Conference LingO 2007
PB - Oxford University Press
CY - Oxford
T2 - The Oxford Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics: LingO 2007
Y2 - 21 September 2007 through 22 September 2007
ER -