Partial or complete lack of plural agreement
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Natascha Pomino
Abstract
Many Romance languages and varieties show different patterns of partial or complete lack of plural agreement within the determiner phrase (DP). This phenomenon has scarcely been addressed in the literature and poses problems for any kind of analysis proposed so far, regardless of the theoretical background. This paper presents and classifies several cases of lack of plural agreement or plural marking within the Romance DP and critically discusses several proposed analyses in research literature and their applicability to these Romance varieties. The main focus of the discussion is placed on the role which morphology is assumed to play. It is argued that lack of plural agreement can be explained neither in pure syntactic terms nor in pure morphological terms.
Abstract
Many Romance languages and varieties show different patterns of partial or complete lack of plural agreement within the determiner phrase (DP). This phenomenon has scarcely been addressed in the literature and poses problems for any kind of analysis proposed so far, regardless of the theoretical background. This paper presents and classifies several cases of lack of plural agreement or plural marking within the Romance DP and critically discusses several proposed analyses in research literature and their applicability to these Romance varieties. The main focus of the discussion is placed on the role which morphology is assumed to play. It is argued that lack of plural agreement can be explained neither in pure syntactic terms nor in pure morphological terms.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Morphological theories, the Autonomy of Morphology, and Romance data 1
- A paradox? 27
- Verb morphology gone astray 55
- The Friulian subject clitics 83
- Romance clitic pronouns in lexical paradigms 119
- Hiatus resolution between function and lexical words in French and Italian 141
- Occitan plurals 179
- Partial or complete lack of plural agreement 201
- Noun inflectional classes in Maceratese 231
- Participles and nominal aspect 271
- Modifying suffixes in Italian and the Autonomy of Morphology 295
- SE -verbs, SE -forms or SE -constructions? SE and its transitional stages between morphology and syntax 319
- The lexicalist hypothesis and the semantics of event nominalization suffixes 347
- Italian brand names – morphological categorisation and the Autonomy of Morphology 369
- Author index 385
- Index of subjects and languages 389
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Morphological theories, the Autonomy of Morphology, and Romance data 1
- A paradox? 27
- Verb morphology gone astray 55
- The Friulian subject clitics 83
- Romance clitic pronouns in lexical paradigms 119
- Hiatus resolution between function and lexical words in French and Italian 141
- Occitan plurals 179
- Partial or complete lack of plural agreement 201
- Noun inflectional classes in Maceratese 231
- Participles and nominal aspect 271
- Modifying suffixes in Italian and the Autonomy of Morphology 295
- SE -verbs, SE -forms or SE -constructions? SE and its transitional stages between morphology and syntax 319
- The lexicalist hypothesis and the semantics of event nominalization suffixes 347
- Italian brand names – morphological categorisation and the Autonomy of Morphology 369
- Author index 385
- Index of subjects and languages 389
