draft of November 2011

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The book you are looking for you’ll find it on the table. The pattern becomes somewhat more complicated in Italian when plurals are considered. As can be seen in (12a) and in (7) repeated as (12b), the plural clitic le resists a non-referential antecedent, just like the Greek clitics. (12) a. *Segretarie le trovi facilemente. Secretaries them.cl.fem find easily Secretaries, you will find them easily. b. ?quanti pazienti ritieni che li debba visitare ogni medico? how-many patients think-2sg that them.cl.msc should visit each doctor How many patients do you think each doctor should visit? (no wide scope for universal) However, unlike Greek, Italian does not resort to an alternative structure (Topicalisation) to realise plural indefinite topics. Rather it employs an alternative clitic, namely ne as shown in (13). Importantly, while a bare plural is possible in these structures, a DP involving the bare partititive construction delle N is also available. (13) a. (Delle)-segretarie ne trovi facilemente. Secretaries of-them.cl find.easily Secretaries, you will find them easily b. (Delle)-segretarie se *(ne) trovano facilmente Secretaries refl of-them.cl find easily Secretaries, can be found easily. In sum then, Greek non-referential/indefinite topics are structurally different from their definite/referential counterparts; they involve bare nominals linked to a gap. By contrast, Italian systematically employs clld as its topic strategy but manipulates the type of D- elements (pronominals/articles) involved. 10
3.2 Indefinite pronominal antecedents and Indefinite Argument Drop (IAD) The range of available interpretations for an indefinite clld-ed phrase in the two languages mirrors the possibilities available in intrasentential anaphora. Compare (9a) with (14). The pronoun la in (14a) and lo in (14b) can admit a non-referential antecedent just like the clld example in (9a). Notice again that la and lo cannot be ommitted in (14). (14) a. A:Maria ha trovato una baby sitter? B:Si, l’ha trovata A:Maria has-3sg found a baby sitter? B:Yes, her.cl’has-3sg found A:Has Maria found a baby sitter? B: yes, she found one b. Gianni sta cercando un idraulico ma non lo trova Gianni is looking-for a plumber but not him.cl find-3sg Gianni is looking-for a plumber but cannot find one. Compare now the Greek Topicalisation example in (9b) with (15). The pronouns ti and ton are incompatible with the indefinite bare noun antecedents, just as in (9b). In fact, there is no pronoun in these examples; rather the (object) argument is dropped; the phenomenon was first observed by Dimitriadis (1994) who also drew a correlation between the availability of Greek Topicalisation and argument drop in examples like (15). 9 (See also Giannakidou and Merchant (1997), Tsimpli and Papadopoulou (2005) and Panagiotidis (2002)): (15) a. A:vrike dada I Maria? B:ne, (*ti) vrike Q:found-3sg nanny the-nom Maria A:yes, (*her) found-3sg Has Maria found a nanny? Yes, she found. b. o Yanis psahni idravliko alla dhe (*ton) vriski puthena the-nom Yanis look-for-3sg plumber but not (him) find-3sg anywhere Yanis is looking for a plumber but cannot nd one anywhere. Note that the problem in (15) is not the bare nominal per se, but the necessarily non- referential interpretation of bare nouns which bars them as pronominal antecedents. As we shall see in the next section, bare nouns can be discourse transparent, i.e. act as pronoun antecedents. But in (15) the interpretations are necessarily non-referential/weak. When enan 9 He refers to what we call Topicalisation as Empty clld. 11
Page 1 and 2: Topic-strategies and the internal s
Page 3 and 4: 1 Introduction Clitic Left Dislocat
Page 5 and 6: (5) a. Fetos i moda ine apesia; idi
Page 7 and 8: evidence of reconstruction, and, th
Page 9: 3.1 Greek manipulates structure whi
Page 13 and 14: 3.3 Bare nouns As has become eviden
Page 15 and 16: systematically employs articles and
Page 17 and 18: Syntax They can be left dislocated
Page 19 and 20: Further, Greek bare nouns have atom
Page 21 and 22: You will need a skirt sewn in India
Page 23 and 24: 4.1.2 Towards a crosslinguistic typ
Page 25 and 26: semantics of Greek Number? We will
Page 27 and 28: e felicitous subjects, even under r
Page 29 and 30: However, the data below indicate th
Page 31 and 32: generalisation is that only languag
Page 33 and 34: that the definite is a noun phrase.
Page 35 and 36: excellent one (so the time we took
Page 37 and 38: (66) *den prokite na vri ti yineka
Page 39 and 40: . o Napoleodas epline (ta) piatai k
Page 41 and 42: (75) a. o Yanis psahni idravliko al
Page 43 and 44: Let us now turn to subnominal ellip
Page 45 and 46: Beautiful she is. b. belle lo sono?
Page 47 and 48: just semantically definite elements
Page 49 and 50: topic-strategies between the two la
Page 51 and 52: Alexopoulou, T. and C. Heycock (200
Page 53 and 54: Giusti, G. (1997). The categorial s
Page 55 and 56: Sells, P. (1984). Syntax and Semant

draft of November 2011

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?