The Rhaeto-Romance Languages

Benincá, Paola Delai; Haiman, John

doi:10.4324/9780203992487

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Further research may benefit from expanding the set of linguistic properties to also include systematic comparison of grammatical properties and typological traits (Bakker et al, 2009) in combination with the phonetic and lexical ones considered here. This might reveal further similarities between Gallo-Italic and other Gallo-Romance varieties, for example in syllabic structure (Montreuil, 2000) or in the formation of clausal negation (Zanuttini, 1997 Benincà & Haiman (2005) for discussion.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Tamburelli

Brasca

2017

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

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While Gallo-Italic varieties clearly belong to the Romance language family, their subgrouping as either Gallo-Romance or Italo-Romance has been the source of disagreement in the classificatory literature. While earlier analyses tended to classify Gallo-Italic as Gallo-Romance (notably Schmid, 1956; Bec, 1970-1971), later work has either argued for or tacitly assumed a classification of Gallo-Italic as part of the Italo-Romance branch, a view that is both different from as well as irreconcilable with the earlier Gallo-Romance classifications. In this paper we aim to contribute to the development of an empirically-based classification of Gallo-Italic through the use of dialectometry applied to atlas corpora, and specifically through the measurement of Levenshtein distance. Using three wordlists (Swadesh 100, Swadesh 200, Leipzig-Jakarta) and comparing twenty-six linguistic varieties across Italy and southeastern France, we show that Gallo-Italic is best classified as a third subgroup within the Gallo-Romance branch. Our results also clearly identify all the major bundles of isoglosses established through traditional dialectological methods and confirm Gallo-Italic as a relatively homogenous group distinct from Italo-Romance.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Tamburelli

Brasca

2017

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

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“…In all Germanic languages, except for English, the finite verb must follow the first sentence constituent in declarative and interrogative main clauses as a consequence of a syntactic constraint known as Verb Second (henceforth: V2, see den Besten 1983, Tomaselli 1990, Branigan 1996, Holmberg 2015, Holmberg&Platzack 1995. As is well-known, this constraint is not found in present-day Romance varieties, with the exception of some Rhaeto-Romance varieties (see Anderson 2005, Kaiser 2002, Salvi 2010 for the claim that Rhaeto-Romance varieties are V2 languages, and Adams 1987, Benincà 1984, Benincà & Poletto 2004, Cognola 2013, Fontana 1993, Ledgeway 2005, 2007, Poletto 2002, 2014, Salvesen 2013, Salvi 2000, Vance 1987, Vanelli 1987, Wolfe 2015 for the idea that Old Romance languages were also V2 languages).…”

Section: Introduction *mentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Our work is a first attempt to fill this gap, since it compares one particular syntactic phenomenon in two Ladin varietiesthus contributing to our understanding of their 1 We do not take a position about the relationship between these three groups. For a range of opinions, see Pellegrini (1991), Haiman & Benincà (1992, Goebl (2000), Vanelli (2004), Benincà&Vanelli (2005.…”

Section: Sociolinguistic Overview and Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Verb-Second and (Micro)Variation in Two Rhaeto-Romance Varieties of Northern Italy

Casalicchio¹,

Cognola²

2018

Advances in Italian Dialectology

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Rhaeto-Romance varieties are the only present-day Romance varieties which exhibit the Verb Second constraint , Poletto 2002, Salvi 2010. In this chapter we examine two properties typically ascribed to the Verb Second phenomenon, subject-finite verb inversion and restrictions on the co-occurrence of multiple constituents in the sentence-initial position, in two Rhaeto-Romance varieties spoken in South Tyrol (Province of Bolzano, Northern Italy). We demonstrate that both varieties behave like Verb-Second languages as far as both phenomena are concerned, but exhibit a specific Verb-Second system governed by the interplay between syntactic and discourse constraints which differs from that of Germanic and Old Romance languages. We also show that these two varieties are subject to diatopic and micro-diatopic variation and therefore provide an excellent showcase for the role of sociolinguistic factors in determining variation in syntax.

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“…Research on the diachronic syntax of Romance languages has led to considerablealbeit not absoluteconsensus that medieval Romance was characterized by V2, existing as a transitional phase between the predominant SOV order of Classical Latin and the SVO order of modern Romance. Among the presentday Romance languages, V2 is only found in some Rhaeto-Romance varieties (see Haiman & Benincà 1992;Benincà 1994;Poletto 2002;Anderson 2005); but, according to Benincà (1983Benincà ( , 2006 and many others after her, V2 syntax was present in many, or even all, medieval Romance languages. 3 The V2 status of medieval Romance is particularly well attested and widely supported by corpus-based statistical studies (see Ledgeway 2012;Poletto 2014;and Wolfe 2018 for some overviews), but has also been disputed and denied, especially for old Ibero-Romance languages (see Martins 1994Martins , 2002Martins , 2019Kaiser 1999Kaiser , 2002Ribeiro 1995;Sornicola 2000;Rinke 2009;Rinke & Meisel 2009;Sitaridou 2012).…”

Section: V2 In the History Of Romancementioning

confidence: 99%

What is “residual verb second”? And what does Romance have to do with it?

Cruschina

Sailor

2022

isogloss

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This paper aims to clarify a point of persistent confusion in the literature: namely, the status of residual verb second. We approach this from both a terminological and typological perspective. Terminologically, traditional usage of residual V2 in the literature has conflated two different senses (one formal, and one historical); we argue that it is essential to keep these two senses separate. We propose a distinction between partial V2 and residual V2 within the general typology of verb second. Following a formal definition of V2 from the recent literature, we define partial-V2 systems as involving genuine instances of V2 that are limited to nondeclarative environments in a given language (e.g. English). By contrast, we (re)define residual V2 as describing purely vestigial structures that do not qualify as formally V2 in the synchronic grammar of a given language, despite their historical origins in an earlier stage in which the language had true V2. In this respect, almost all modern Romance languages provide clear examples of residual V2: the syntax of these languages is only historically related to V2, with all formal traces of V2 having been long lost, even in nondeclaratives. With these clarifications in place, we propose an updated typology of V2 systems, conceiving of it as a spectrum of degrees from partial V2 through strict V2 (as measured by the set of formally-V2 environments that a given language allows).

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The Rhaeto-Romance Languages

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Revisiting the classification of Gallo-Italic: a dialectometric approach

Verb-Second and (Micro)Variation in Two Rhaeto-Romance Varieties of Northern Italy

What is “residual verb second”? And what does Romance have to do with it?

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