Additive and aspectual anche in Old Italian
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Irene Franco
Abstract
In Modern Italian (MI), negative additives (e.g. neanche ‘neither/not even’) contain a negative morpheme ne - and obey negative concord (NC) with sentential negation. In Old Italian (OI), negative additives such as neanche are not attested. Instead, a non-negative additive, anche, combines with a negative marker: e.g. né/non…anche (‘neither/not even’). In OI (i) anche can be used both in negative, and positive contexts; (ii) anche can function either as an aspectual marker (= ‘(not) yet’), or as an additive focalizer (= ‘neither/not even’); (iii) different syntactic positions mirror its different interpretations. We suggest that the grammaticalization of neanche originates from the contexts in which additive anche occurs immediately right adjacent to the negative disjunction né (i.e. né + anche > neanche).
Abstract
In Modern Italian (MI), negative additives (e.g. neanche ‘neither/not even’) contain a negative morpheme ne - and obey negative concord (NC) with sentential negation. In Old Italian (OI), negative additives such as neanche are not attested. Instead, a non-negative additive, anche, combines with a negative marker: e.g. né/non…anche (‘neither/not even’). In OI (i) anche can be used both in negative, and positive contexts; (ii) anche can function either as an aspectual marker (= ‘(not) yet’), or as an additive focalizer (= ‘neither/not even’); (iii) different syntactic positions mirror its different interpretations. We suggest that the grammaticalization of neanche originates from the contexts in which additive anche occurs immediately right adjacent to the negative disjunction né (i.e. né + anche > neanche).
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The spurious vs. dative problem 5
- Givenness and the difference between wh -fronted and wh -in-situ questions in Spanish 21
- The building blocks of Catalan ‘at least’ 41
- On ben in Trentino regional Italian 55
- Matrix complementisers and ‘speech act’ syntax 75
- External possession in Brazilian Portuguese 95
- Spanish adjectives are PathPs 111
- Additive and aspectual anche in Old Italian 127
- The acquisition of variation 143
- Exploring sociolinguistic discontinuity in a minority variety of French 159
- (And yet) another proposal for ser/estar 177
- Spanish estarse is not only agentive, but also inchoative 209
- From completely free to complete freedom 225
- Romanian dependent numerals as ratios 245
- For an overt movement analysis of comparison at a distance in French 259
- The role of L2 exposure in L3A 279
- European Portuguese focalizing SER ‘to be’ 297
- Occitan, verb second and the Medieval Romance word order debate 315
- Language index 337
- Subject index 339
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The spurious vs. dative problem 5
- Givenness and the difference between wh -fronted and wh -in-situ questions in Spanish 21
- The building blocks of Catalan ‘at least’ 41
- On ben in Trentino regional Italian 55
- Matrix complementisers and ‘speech act’ syntax 75
- External possession in Brazilian Portuguese 95
- Spanish adjectives are PathPs 111
- Additive and aspectual anche in Old Italian 127
- The acquisition of variation 143
- Exploring sociolinguistic discontinuity in a minority variety of French 159
- (And yet) another proposal for ser/estar 177
- Spanish estarse is not only agentive, but also inchoative 209
- From completely free to complete freedom 225
- Romanian dependent numerals as ratios 245
- For an overt movement analysis of comparison at a distance in French 259
- The role of L2 exposure in L3A 279
- European Portuguese focalizing SER ‘to be’ 297
- Occitan, verb second and the Medieval Romance word order debate 315
- Language index 337
- Subject index 339
