Crossing Form and Function: First and Second Person Plural Imperatives in the Dialect of Mesocco
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Michele Loporcaro
Abstract
This paper proposes an explanation for the rise and fall of a 1pl imperative ending in the dialect of Mesocco, a Northern Italo-Romance variety from southern Switzerland. This ending cannot be explained with inherited 1pl morphology: rather, it is best accounted for by assuming the reanalysis of a 2pl imperative hosting a 1sg pronominal object clitic. This reanalysis, it is suggested, must have occurred in the syntactic context provided by the ‘ethical’ dative construction. It has been prompted by several factors, among which the crucial one is functional in nature, viz. the pragmatic homology between 1pl imperative – unmarkedly inclusive in meaning – and the ethical dative construction with a 2pl imperative. Comparative evidence is also adduced from studies in linguistic typology, showing that similar crossovers between 1st and 2nd person plural morphology, although unattested in Romance (or, more precisely, in the better-known standard Romance languages), are not without parallels cross-linguistically. Finally, a functional motivation is provided for the deacquisition of this 1pl imperative form in the dialect of the younger generations.
© Walter de Gruyter
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- Introduction: Natural Morphology
- How to Live Naturally and not be Bothered by Economy
- Productivity of the Weak Verbs in Romanian
- On the Typology of Inflection Class Systems
- On Spanish Verb Inflection
- The Superstable Marker as an Indicator of Categorial Weakness?
- Case Before Gender in the Acquisition of German
- Crossing Form and Function: First and Second Person Plural Imperatives in the Dialect of Mesocco
- Lexical Blends: Functionally Tuning the Transparency of Complex Words
- Libri: Publications received — Publications reçues — Eingelaufene Literatur
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: Natural Morphology
- How to Live Naturally and not be Bothered by Economy
- Productivity of the Weak Verbs in Romanian
- On the Typology of Inflection Class Systems
- On Spanish Verb Inflection
- The Superstable Marker as an Indicator of Categorial Weakness?
- Case Before Gender in the Acquisition of German
- Crossing Form and Function: First and Second Person Plural Imperatives in the Dialect of Mesocco
- Lexical Blends: Functionally Tuning the Transparency of Complex Words
- Libri: Publications received — Publications reçues — Eingelaufene Literatur
