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Chapter 7. Partial subject paradigms and feature geometry in Northern Occitan dialects

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Abstract

In between the minority of Romance languages that have full paradigms of subject clitics (e.g. Standard French) and the unmarked null subject grammars (e.g. Spanish, Italian and most Occitan dialects), a continuum of transitional varieties shows between one and five nominative clitics. Unlike the better documented Northern Italian Dialects, Northern Occitan Dialects have nominative clitics paradigms which typically begin with distinct meteorological subjects. The shape and sequence of the partial nominative clitic paradigms maps the progressive diachronic introduction of contrasts using underspecified monovalent features organized hierarchically to reflect implicational dependencies, following Harley & Ritter’s (2002) Feature Geometry. Meteorological subject pronouns play a crucial role in this diachronic progression precisely because they lack morphological features and therefore can map onto non-referential subjects.

Abstract

In between the minority of Romance languages that have full paradigms of subject clitics (e.g. Standard French) and the unmarked null subject grammars (e.g. Spanish, Italian and most Occitan dialects), a continuum of transitional varieties shows between one and five nominative clitics. Unlike the better documented Northern Italian Dialects, Northern Occitan Dialects have nominative clitics paradigms which typically begin with distinct meteorological subjects. The shape and sequence of the partial nominative clitic paradigms maps the progressive diachronic introduction of contrasts using underspecified monovalent features organized hierarchically to reflect implicational dependencies, following Harley & Ritter’s (2002) Feature Geometry. Meteorological subject pronouns play a crucial role in this diachronic progression precisely because they lack morphological features and therefore can map onto non-referential subjects.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Syntax-semantics
  5. Chapter 1. Embedding verbs and subjunctive mood 9
  6. Chapter 2. Towards a unified treatment of Spanish copulas 33
  7. Chapter 3. How French sheds new light on scalar particles 53
  8. Chapter 4. Pluralities of events 77
  9. Part II. Morphosyntax
  10. Chapter 5. Laísmo and “le-for-les” 101
  11. Chapter 6. The morphological markedness of φ 127
  12. Chapter 7. Partial subject paradigms and feature geometry in Northern Occitan dialects 147
  13. Chapter 8. Automatic detection of syntactic patterns from texts with application to Spanish clitic doubling 169
  14. Part III. Bilingualism and language acquisition
  15. Chapter 9. Voice quality transfer in the production of Spanish heritage speakers and English L2 learners of Spanish 191
  16. Chapter 10. Null subjects in the early acquisition of English by child heritage speakers of Spanish 209
  17. Chapter 11. Return to Frenchville 229
  18. Chapter 12. The processing of intrasentential anaphoric subject pronouns in L2 Spanish 247
  19. Index 265
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 11
This chapter is in the book Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 11
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.11.07oli

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Syntax-semantics
  5. Chapter 1. Embedding verbs and subjunctive mood 9
  6. Chapter 2. Towards a unified treatment of Spanish copulas 33
  7. Chapter 3. How French sheds new light on scalar particles 53
  8. Chapter 4. Pluralities of events 77
  9. Part II. Morphosyntax
  10. Chapter 5. Laísmo and “le-for-les” 101
  11. Chapter 6. The morphological markedness of φ 127
  12. Chapter 7. Partial subject paradigms and feature geometry in Northern Occitan dialects 147
  13. Chapter 8. Automatic detection of syntactic patterns from texts with application to Spanish clitic doubling 169
  14. Part III. Bilingualism and language acquisition
  15. Chapter 9. Voice quality transfer in the production of Spanish heritage speakers and English L2 learners of Spanish 191
  16. Chapter 10. Null subjects in the early acquisition of English by child heritage speakers of Spanish 209
  17. Chapter 11. Return to Frenchville 229
  18. Chapter 12. The processing of intrasentential anaphoric subject pronouns in L2 Spanish 247
  19. Index 265
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